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I "was joined "the club...
#1
Recently found out Helco is charging "customer fee"

weather or not you use the service.

(I got the bill before even moved in).

It's like joining a club.. only this time I was"joined".

Welcome to the club???
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#2
That is standard practice among utility companies.
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#3
Is it?
I think SDGE in CA didn't charge us when we left for vacation for a month.Though it was a while ago and I might be wrong.
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#4
They charge you for having the option to use it, lol.

Options have value I guess.
Also watch out for electricity leakage; it can really run up your bill. ;-)
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#5
Electricity leakage?
What do you mean,Kathy?
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#6
Electrical leakage is the small draw of power that many of the appliances we use have (anything with a light, clock, standby mode is drawing electricity. Berkley labs has a good write up on electrical leakage:

http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Arch...watts.html

Most utilities, inc. phone, water, electricity have a user fee... that is the fee to cover the company bringing their service into your house...
I cannot think of a time in the midwest when I wasn't billed a user fee for utilities (though my memory only clearly goes back so far, user fees seem fairly well entrenched into the cobwebs...)

ETA:Stillhope, have you looked at any of your past bills?... it almost sounds like this is the first time you have had some of these things...

Oh, and you may have had things that were powered up even when you were not living in the house, (things like your well pump, refrig. & such all may have had some small power draws to keep them running... Oh, and a biggie is the SMOKE DETECTORS.... I am sure you wanted that powered even before you moved in

It seems that you will not be expecting any charges when you are not at home, but your home may use power when you are not there.... & the only way to make sure there are no power draws is to cut the supply (through a switch or a breaker - best not to call HELCO to cancel service when you go away... you will get a charge to re-establish service.... just telling you incase....
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#7
Thank you,Carey.The house was empty,but there were smoke detectors,s required.
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#8
Actually I was kidding, Hope ... tongue in cheek

but Carey is right to mention all the power that gets consumed when it doesn't seem like anything is running.
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#9
FYI, builders and users of photovoltaic systems refer to electricity leakage as phantom loads. People on those systems learn to use power strips or some other form of switched outlets to shut power off to things like DVD players and microwaves when not in use, usually at night, to give the inverter a break (then they can actually go to "sleep") and let the storage batteries rebound.

Not sure I'd recommend that for a hard-wired smoke detector, though.

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