Is it worth trying out one of these other electric providers? Does it save you a lot over your current bill?

Be very careful. There are a bunch of startups who claim to be working with the town, city, county, state and power company who want to sign you up for cheap power. In fact, they may send you a refund check every month. They have tried to get several of our branch offices to sign up for the best thing since sex - and they will pay you to do it!

 

Check them out very carefully. The ones I investigated require that they control your usage, cut you off or brown you out to supply others and can take your generator power (if you have one) to supply others. Their financial sheet is typically a disaster. They have lost money every year, with increased losses annually. The top six or so execs are being paid over a half million a year.

 

This may be the newest version of MLM, Ponzi scheme or selling you a bridge.\

 

My connection with them has always been on the business side - not private residences, but....................... caveat emptor!

Be very careful. There are a bunch of startups who claim to be working with the town, city, county, state and power company who want to sign you up for cheap power. In fact, they may send you a refund check every month. They have tried to get several of our branch offices to sign up for the best thing since sex - and they will pay you to do it!

 

Check them out very carefully. The ones I investigated require that they control your usage, cut you off or brown you out to supply others and can take your generator power (if you have one) to supply others. Their financial sheet is typically a disaster. They have lost money every year, with increased losses annually. The top six or so execs are being paid over a half million a year.

 

This may be the newest version of MLM, Ponzi scheme or selling you a bridge.\

 

My connection with them has always been on the business side - not private residences, but....................... caveat emptor!

 

What is the worst that can happen? No power or some exorbitant bill? PSE&G still supplies the power, no?

The 3rd party stops paying PSE&G, JCP&L or whoever. Guess who gets cut off? The 3rd party can transfer your power to someone else. You get either a brown out or black out. You will no loger have a contract with the distribution company - they will

99% scam... there are actually conventions that recruit people to try and sell this... it's cheaper for only a few months.. then some grant money cap per account runs out and now you have to pay additional fees to use PSG's lines... then they jack your bill up and when you are ready to cancel you have pay early termination fee, then they have a branch that are "collectors" of these canceled accounts and they ruin your credit... Don't do it.... go with your gut.

 

How can they provide electric cheaper then your electric company AND use their lines?

Scam. My cousin is hammering me about this issue and I checked it out with a few professionals in the field and they told me to stay away!

Well for me and my business i switched to Liberty Power at a fixed rate and it actually does save me money, i have been with them for about 3 yrs now

I had a couple of younger sales guys come in my office almost every day for a week about a month or so ago. They said they were working the area and wanted me to show them my electric bill because they were "sure" they could save me money on my electric bill by switching companies. Since I do not feel comfortable opening my books to some strangers who walked in my door and couldn't even provide me with a business card, let alone some once of credibility, I told them the bills were not stored in that office. They still showed up everyday to see if I had brought them into work. Now, also understand that my electric bill is only about $150 a month, so how much are they going to save me off of that bill? I'd rather not take the risk to MAYBE save $2-3 a month, and I'd still have JCP&L's crappy response time to outages anyway since they still own the lines.

I have a couple of the wife's friends that are pushing me to be a seller or a contractor for these so called "save money by switching to gieco" (hahaha). All I really know about it is that they sign you up to a new electric company that is supposedly GREENER. I don't know anything else because I don't believe in ripping people off or tricking them. But they do swear to save you money by switching to thier electric company.

 

I just don't promote on anything I don't believe in.

the deregulation of the power industry is real. Many states, by legislation (NJ is one of them) allows users to CHOOSE who their enery SUPPLIER is. That is different than energy DISTRIBUTION. PSEG owns the lines, so they are the distrubutor. You are allowed to purchase power from any providers in the area.

 

its not any more a scam than the competition between FIOS/Cablevision/Comcast. Companies will always offer "deals" or discounts to get market share. Even if you read your electric bill every month it says "you have the right to purchase power from somebody else."

 

As far as the aggressive sales people go.. that's how it is with any business that is trying to gain customers. There is high commissions to the sales force for getting new customers, so they will be very aggressive.

 

So i'm just saying that not all of them are scams. It is a real thing in the power industry. Switching providers runs the risk of switching with anything.. cable/phone/oil/gas.. some people it works out for.. others it doesnt.

 

Ambit energy has marketed to me. They say 10% to 20% reduction in the production cost. When i google them the only complaints that come up are from people that were former sales people that didnt make as much money as they were led to believe being a sales person. The ponzi it appears is on the sales person side, not the consumer side. They promise one of those deals where you get the commish, then if they refer 10 people then you get more commish.. so on so on.. I don't see complaints from customers saying their bills went up or power shut off.

 

I'm going to seriously look into it. hundreds of dollars in savings a year is nothing to sneeze at.

 

Power production choice has been in California for like ten years..

There's some confusion here.

 

There's commercial. I'm ignoring that, and you should ignore Daedalus' take on it unless you are dealing with commercial power. There are good contracts and bad in that, and make sure you know what you are signing before you sign it.

 

Then there's residential. Ignore the squeegee people that come to your door. I call them that because they are like the dudes at stoplights trying to get you to pay for messing up your windshield under the guise of cleaning it. They got themselves in a mess and are trying to share their problem with you. That being said, there are several very reputable energy firms. I'd have to look up who I am using, but the only thing they sent me was a piece of mail with their terms and rate. Because of how the law is set up in NJ, you can switch providers whenever you want, so worst you get stuck with is two billing cycles. I'm saving about $0.02 per kilowatt hour in the summer, and about $0.01 in the winter. Doesn't sound like much, but it adds up to about $20 a month for half the year. STILL doesn't sound like much, but what it has gotten me out of is the BS that JCP&L does where they estimate your usage the month before their permitted rate hike in the summer, it is somehow magically 1/3 of your typical mid winter usage for a month you were running the AC 80% of the time, then the month after at their new rates you get whacked with two months usage more or less. Worst year when they did that cost me nearly $300 it shouldn't have.

 

I've gotten a cheaper power generation price that is more stable, and I can switch at any time with the only issue being that the switch doesn't take place until the end of your billing cycle.

Here are my basic generation charges for JCP&L and then switching over to Energy Plus on May 31:

1/27 2/28 0.108653 JCP&L

2/29 3/28 0.119529 JCP&L

3/29 4/27 0.117186 JCP&L

4/28 5/30 0.117185 JCP&L

5/31 6/28 0.10272 Energy Plus first month (ok so far)

6/29 7/31 0.15943 Energy Plus second month (Holy crap!)

Can anyone recommend a better supplier or should I switch back to JCP&L?

P.S. Did this to get airline miles

I'll stick with my PSEG. Granted, I only have electic and no natural gas to the house, I've never had an interruption of more than a couple seconds in over 30-years. Now where's that wood to knock on?