After the customer does call in to complain, the billing department then tells the customer the true charges. I just hope an 80 year old grandma doesn't open her electric bill to see a $5,000 charge and have a heart attack. Anyone smell a potential lawsuit here?
Here's a novel idea for the electric company - send a meter man to take the reading. Granted, it costs more money to do it the old-fashioned way, but the liability for lying to customers to get them to call could result in multi-million dollar lawsuits. Or better yet, do what my electric company recently did to my electric meter. They installed a wireless transmitter to it. I think its range is fairly limited though. When I asked the installer how it works, she said that they have to drive a van through the neighborhood and then the van automatically picks up the usage data. Hmmm. I wonder if that wireless data stream can be hacked? $20 electric bills sure would be nice!
