This post is not about me. It is about PG&E. For those outside of California, it is the utilities company with a monopoly on the California energy market. Thanks go to Sam for the debate that spawned this post.
Friday was a pretty good day. Nice weather, no tests, an agreeable lunch. That was until I came home and found a PG&E flier on my doorknob. Then it was a great day.
On the program, they were advertising a program for saving money on my utilities bill. That’s nice, they’re looking out for me. They know they charge me too much, and they feel guilty, so they’re giving me an opportunity to save money. Awesome!
The problem is, they don’t actually want to save me money. Why would they? They’re a corporation. They’re in the business of making money, not giving it to customers! Seriously, they have the word “gas” in their name. Of course they’re trying to make money. This simple fact led to skepticism about the original offer.
So I read it all through, front and back. It was offering to save me a bunch of money on my utilities bill, if I just filled out the included form. But the most noticeable thing was that I had to be in quite a low income bracket to even qualify for the program ($25,000 for two people in household). Right away, that disqualifies 90% of the people in my neighborhood.
Surely PG&E knows this. They’ve got the resources to figure out that the fairly affluent town in which I live is not going to have many eligible people. Of those few that do qualify, even fewer would actually sign up. Yet still, my entire block was lined with fliers.
Now, this begs the question: “Why would they send the entire town fliers if they know no one will actually use their program?” And the answer is quite obvious: they don’t actually want to save us money!
They’ve sent out these fliers as PR propaganda. As a typical Californian citizen, I’m supposed to pick up this flier, get excited about saving money, get angry that I don’t qualify, realize that PG&E is just looking out for those less fortunate than I, and then come away with a new found respect for the well-meaning company that powers my television.
How else could you explain it? That they actually want to save their customers money? If that’s the case, someone at PG&E has got to get fired. That business plan is going NOWHERE! Or, perhaps, the government is making ‘em do it. If so, go Arnold! go Public Utilities Comission!
There've been 9 whole comments
2:05 pm on 4/30/2006 1. Neil Kelty
Well, its not really a new concept. You’ve figured out their “evil” motives, but do you really think every other person in your neighborhood thought about this?
But you also could be wrong - they could just have a REALLY stupid marketing department, but I think I have to agree with you on this one. They want you to think that they really care - when they obviously don’t.
If I were you I would give old PG&E.a call and let them know something. Hey, I just say this thing on my door that will let us save money on our utilities bill. It sounds great - but I’ve got a better solution. Why don’t you just lower our prices a little bit and then it will be the same?
This flyer proves your hypothesis correct - if they wanted to really save you money than they would just lower their prices.
Not necessarily, there are a plethora of ways to create a successful business while giving people better service at a lower price. The thing is - as you said - those companies don’t have the word “gas” in their name.
8:39 pm on 5/2/2006 2. Hello
this post makes absolutly no sense to me right now you said they are trying to help those who are more fortunate than you but the qualifying income is $20,000 or less for a 2 person household..how are these people more fortunate when they make less money? when you have more money i believe you shouldnt get a discount only for those who really need it get it…save money by watching less TV or using your computer less
9:02 pm on 5/2/2006 3. Andrew
TYPO. Wow, that was a serious brain fart..I changed it to less. Sorry!
3:34 pm on 6/9/2006 4. element
Hey Jale…I somehow lost the SQL database for the periodic table I had running for myself. Would you be so kind and email it to me so I could load it up again?
thanks Andrew
11:45 am on 7/26/2006 5. Chris
One common use of coupons and discounts like this is price discrimination. Basically, the idea is this:
If PG&E has an energy monopoly, they can charge way more for utilities than it costs to produce them. That means that they’ll probably charge an excessively high price to milk the rich people.
However, if it doesn’t cost them much to produce utilities, then they can still make money by charging less to poor people.
That’s how rebates often work; they let companies charge a lower price to poor people so they can still profit from them even as they charge more.
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I would highly recommend studying some economics, it’s fun. And by the way, nice job with the shoutbox; I was using it before and it’s pretty slick (though I may have to rework it due to spammers). Thanks!
2:58 pm on 9/14/2006 6. Cristobal Guerra
Hello, i writte you from Spain, Madrid, i´m from this city, i´m very interested in blogs of the type you writte, about cotidian situacions related as this one, a flier that you can understand it´s prupose i have a very near blogger here in Spain that´s is makin a blog very simmilar as yours it´s name is Yokin and the link is: http://www.Yokin.net, and i saw your article about your spanish lesson, i´m already translating one full article from the Foreign Affairs magazine edited in EE.UU., i love that magazine, i´m improving much my english that way, i tell you this because if you want to have some help translating and undersatanding spanish, you can lain on me, and maybe you will help me translating things of authors like William Blake or a essay that i found in the Project Guttenberg web about the non christian cross. Show me how cool you are and answer me, please i retype my mail here: cristhewake@hotmail.com
Cheers
Cris
1:27 pm on 1/4/2007 7. [3!]brav
While site keep Good work
9:13 am on 1/16/2007 8. [3!]realit
good site
11:02 am on 1/17/2007 9. [3!]conos
Beautiful site!