HELCO rant

[laniA]

For several months HElCO keeps sending us card-survey-card-survey thing.
Card- "we are going to send you a survey" or "last months we sent you a survey" followed up by 12 pages of that survey.
They are gouging money from hard working folks so even if I had extra time for their stupid survey I don't want to do it.Don't want even to call them to stop wasting paper.I thought they'd take a hint.

I finally look through their garbage survey.

They want to "be better able to identify your energy needs".

I don't know what exactly they are trying to identify but they need
to know if "the residence occupied year round by yourself or OTHERS".

There are other questions which has very little to do with energy usage.But this one is the worst:

#42. "How soon do you plan on buying or leasing your NEXT BRAND NEW VEHICLE?"

If I'd ever call Helco I'd tell them where to go.But I think they already know it.

[laniA]

Took a last look before composting.

They are curious if you use your home to charge your electric vehicle or "GOVERNMENT OFFICES/BUILDINGS".(#45).

[csgray]

This sounds like data mining.

That is when a company you do business with gets you to share information about yourself through surveys, the information on forms you've filled out for them, and in some cases, even credit reports. Sometimes they will even claim THEY will not share the information, but the 3rd party they contracted with to collect and process the information is not bound by that, and does sell the information. The question about the new car purchase makes me think they are doing just that, unless they are anticipating a wave of electric car sales in a place with the highest electric rates in the country.

Helco reminds me of the old joke about the Bell telephone slogan before it was broken up into regional phone companies: "We don't care, because we don't have to."

Carol

[Kelena]

There is a plan afoot to use Hawaii as a proving ground for all electric vehicles. This would be confined to Oahu for now. There would be charging stations around the isle. The idea is to see how this might work in a fairly controlled market and to see if the idea is feasible for expansion. I forget which car company is involved.

[Alex]

We got one too.They need to know our income (??) and if we ran some business like elderly care out of our house.
So if we are low income and they want to "serve us better" any check coming in mail?
And if we take care of 1-2 kids for min.wage (just an example) I suppose we should pay a commercial rate?

[Hotzcatz]

Well, if you had a woodstove, then these surveys would at least be useful for starting fires. Isn't it a voluntary survey? Does it matter if you ignore it? If not, does it matter if you answer truthfully? I, myself, don't know the answer to these questions since we won't get the survey but it would seem a mere nuisance and at least better than them calling to ask silly questions in the middle of dinner as some survey folks do.

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"I like yard sales," he said. "All true survivalists like yard sales."
Kurt Wilson