You are too tense. Yes, you.

Let me tell you about my day.

This is a phrase that we all use to lead into a long, drawn out story about the horrible things that happened to us on any given day.  This blog isn’t the case.  But even though there is a point to this, let me tell you about my day and it will become clear why I’m taking time out to write this….

I woke up with two major things to do today–get my TV signal fixed, and get my heater fixed.  I’d been waging a quiet, amicable war with Rogers for over a week to get television back into my house, and waking up to a house at 13 degrees Celsius isn’t a good thing.  The appointment with Rogers had been set for some time between 11AM and 2PM.  I e-mailed my landlord, who wrote back with his cell phone number.  I called him, and he gave me the number of who to call to look after the furnace. 

My wife and I got the kids to daycare around the major construction work happening around our house.  Our daycare is a pleasant environment–we’ve taken time to get to know all the teachers and I even say hello to a lot of the kids there by name.  We’ve been with this daycare for over 3 years (since my eldest started) and I’ve always walked out of there with a good feeling.  We stopped at Tim Horton’s for our usual coffees, grabbed a few things at the grocery store, and came home.

12:30PM.  My wife leaves for work, and I give Rogers a call yet as it’s half-time for the appointment window.  I laughed with the agent, saying “yes, I’m being a paranoid customer, but the ticket hasn’t been closed “no access due to construction” again?”  We determined it was still on, and of course, not too long after, the Rogers technician shows up.   Young man, very thorough and friendly.  He replaced old wiring with new wiring and got everything up and running.

So far it’s been an awesome day.

I popped by a neighbour/friend’s for some conversation when I got the phone call:  Heating guy is at your front door.  Another friendly guy, who made the usual comment about my antique gas furnace (“Most people don’t see how many decades they can make a furnace last”).  He told me it might be difficult to replace a certain part on the furnace given its’ age, but he’d look for one and make his recommendation to my landlord.  However, a few taps in the right places and the house has heat again, at least temporarily.

All this taken care of, I re-arrange my living room to accept new furniture, and look at the clock.  5PM–time to go pick up the kids from daycare.

I get the usual cheerful hellos from the teachers at my older son’s house, pick up him, get him dressed in his winter gear and proceed to the other nearby house where my toddler is.  Closing time is 5:30PM, and I arrive just in the nick of time.  I explain to the remaining teacher about having been late earlier in the week (I’ve been late a total of 3 times in 3 years), apologize again, and tell her I’m going to leave at 4:50PM on Monday to make sure.  She wishes me a good weekend, package up my younger son….

A man walks up to me and starts the following conversation:

“Do you know what time it is?  It’s 5:33!”

“And why are you telling me this, sir?”

“I’m picking up my wife from work, and you’re late!”

“It was 5:30PM when I arrived and it’s 5:33PM now, sir.  I’ve already apologized to [name withheld] twice for being late earlier this week.”

“Well, apologizes don’t mean anything.  You pick up your kids at 4:30, you hear?”

“Sir, I don’t like being late any more than you like me being late.”

He made an agressive step toward me.  “What did you say?”

“I said, I hate being late to get my kids any more than you do.”

“Well, pick up your kids at 4:30!”

This guy’s wife was on her way out the door when I said “I’ll make sure to pick up my children whenever you wish, sir.  My sincerest apologies.”

And I walked away.

A-ha, you say, we’re getting close to the point of this writing.  As people out in public society, we pay very little attention to the reality of things, or consider the effect on the other person in such a way as to avoid situations like this.  I am certainly not the kind of person to cause a scene, but I’ve learned a few things along the way.

It only took one short yelling conversation to steal my great mood and turn it into a crappy one.  Sound like a hippie-movement kind of slogan?  On one level, perhaps, yes.  But what does yelling really accomplish?

I used to be a tech support agent for Verizon in the U.S., so I know what it’s like to be indiscriminately yelled at.  But what it ultimately accomplished is this–you get hung up on, or worse–you get an agent that rather than hang up will report you to abuse agencies. or at least you get shitty help rather than good help.  It’s the same all around–this guy’s wife, for example, is an excellent child care teacher, and a nice woman.  Now I have to talk to her about this incident on Monday.  Suddenly I have less patience for my children.

Let me generalize more–I think we’re all far too tense.  We have to get from A to B faster than a Formula One race car, all of our technology has to be functioning perfectly, we have to have our smoke and coffee (unless you don’t do one or both of these things), we have to, have to, have to, as fast as we possibly can.  This results in a society that when someone slows us down for 10 seconds, we give them the finger.  If our Internet is down, we call up and yell at the first agent we speak to regardless of their ability to fix the problem.  Lineup at Tim Horton’s taking too long?  Well, let’s just bitch at the counter person and, if we want to be real assholes, we ask to speak to a manager and ream them out, too.  You have been one or more of these people, and you know it.  You have also been on the receiving end of it, hands down.  You can’t deny this.

The solution is golden-rule simple.  Think of the last time you got dressed down by someone you didn’t know.  Took a while to get your happy back, didn’t it?  And remember yelling at that phone agent about lack of service only to find out a few days later that your appointment was never booked?

Relax.  You have other stuff you can do besides go online, and anyway, it’s not this person’s fault.  That’s right, folks–someone stuck in a room behind a computer you will never speak to or see made the mistake.  The person you have on the phone didn’t cause the problems, so yes, say you’re angry, but keep the voice calm and don’t become argumentative.  Explain the problem politely, and you’ll be surprised when that technician comes out the very next day to fix your problem.  And when the technician comes out, don’t get on his case, either.  He wasn’t the one who aged the wires in your house 30 years or caused the short in the motor of your washing machine.  He may represent the company, but he isn’t responsible for the company’s mistake.  You’ll be surprised how much more people will do for you when you say “I’m angry with the treatment I’ve received from <your company> and this is why”.

What’s more important, I think, is just how contagious this tension disease is becoming.  People honking their horns or giving the finger on the road, rude comments in response to a pleasant greeting from a stranger on the street, yelling at every single person we get on the phone whenever something goes wrong…..wow.  What we need to do is check and balance these reactions and say “Is it really worth getting bent out of shape over?  Is it worth ruining this person’s day, or mine by getting all pissed off about it?”  Thinking before we react might solve a lot of problems, car accidents and bad moods.

Look at what happened when this guy started yelling at me.  A phenomenal day turned into a miserable day with one 2 minute conversation, when aforementioned day care teacher mentioned it to me this week.  And even if I’m in a bad mood, I don’t think other people deserve to have that good mood ripped away from them.

Maybe it’s think before you react.  I don’t know.  You’re too tense–here, let me help you relax a little…..

Oh, nothing. Just customer service FAIL #2.

I really do prefer to use my blog for semi-educated opinions and responses to the bullshit that gets flying around. So why another longish complaint about customer service? Sure, there’s an element of “buyer beware”, but I’ve found with most companies it’s down to an incompetent individual more often than a corporate problem that affects me personally. Still, this story, as they say, is a real humdinger. So, let us move on with another episode of Customer Service FAIL….

*

My wife and I agreed that the purchase of a new pay-as-you-go cell phone, as she was making a 4 hour drive up north with our children in order to spend time with her family. Not having backup on the 400-series highways in Ontario isn’t a grand plan, so we spent a week of evenings researching the best options, and had our hearts set on a phone from Virgin Mobile for $49.99.

The day before their departure, we set off to Best Buy to obtain the phone. Turns out Best Buy was all out of that particular phone, so we walked out, got back in the car, and headed to Future Shop to see what they had, and similarly the phone we had decided on was out of stock.

In restrospect, I should have known what was about to happen. It is Future Shop.

We began to browse through phones, and decided to up the ante and spend $79.99. The phones in this price range had more of what we needed in the box. We were disappointed to discover that Virgin Mobile only offered $5 of airtime with these phones, so we started looking at other options. Making sure that the package would meet our needs, we decided to pick a Telus phone. Pretty much identical features to the Virgin phone, but with a whopping $50 activation credit. That should get Vickie and the boys up north, back home and a couple weeks of breaktime chat.

We bought the phone and brought it back home. At this point, Vickie had to rush to work, so I was left with the task of registering the phone and activating it online. What happened was quite the surprise; the web site stated that the telephone was active under another person’s account. I called Telus to confirm this, and they said this was correct, but (not that it was the agent’s fault) couldn’t offer an explanation except to advise me to take the phone back to Future Shop and exchange it.

As my wife worked until after store hours, I called my father to drive my non-driver’s-licence-obtaining ass back to Future Shop, as we needed to conclude this that day. Interestingly enough, they had no more phones identical to ours. Crunch time, and I now have to make a fast decision.

This is where it gets interesting, folks.

The sales guy’s first option to me was to sell me a $129.00 pay as you go phone from Telus with $30.00 off. Now, for those playing the home game, this would still have required me to pay an extra $30 or so.  You call this a deal?  A note to all sales people reading this–dealing with a customer complaint is NOT a very good time to upsell them by $30, especially when the customer is aware you work for commission.

Alright, now we’re at the negotiation table, and tensions are running high.  I counteroffered with a plan that I felt was very, very feasible.  The Virgin Mobile phone, which was identical in price and would have done the job nicely at $79.99, would do, plus throw in a $25 airtime card for my hassle.  The response was “I’m sorry, sir, but we can’t just give away airtime cards.”  (Remember this for later.)

Our day care does not take overly kindly to parents picking their kids up after closing time of 5:30PM, and this was getting dangerously close to the wire.  ”Does the other London store have any of this phone?”  Clearly this concept hadn’t crossed the minds of any of the three people who had dipped their fingers into this case.  I convinced them to call the other store, where yes, they had 2 phones in stock.

I barely got to the daycare in time, and I wasn’t able to take the kids in the car with me, so it was my father who drove all the way to the London North Future Shop (which is in a new development way the hell northwest in London), exchanged the phone, and brought it home to me.

Telus’s activation was a snap this time, and we have a working phone.

Still, it bothered my wife and I that Telus must have been sending out refurbished phones.  They must have.  Sealed package, phone on someone’s account as an active phone….we remembered that the phone even had a small charge with it.  So, two weeks after the sale (my wife doesn’t have tons of time on her current shift), she decided to call Telus and gently try to get to the bottom of this.

Their response was interesting:  Telus does NOT send out refurbished phones to be sold on store shelves.  They’re all brand new phones.  One point the Telus rep did make was that Future Shop apparently will take defective devices back, make a minor repair if that’s all that’s necessary, but then REPACKAGE AND RESTOCK THE ITEM.  They repeated that Telus does not sell customers refurbished phones unless it’s a replacement under warranty.

Smoke begins to pour out of my ears at this point.  So, we had to drive across the city twice over trying to fix a screw up that in reality was caused by a shady business practice of Future Shop’s?  I don’t know how this works in other countries, but in Canada, if a product is refurbished, it must be clear to the customer that it is a refurbished product.

At this point, we had already decided to pay a visit to the store manager at London South, which as I write this, will be happening later today.  However, one final great insult-to-injury happened when we laughingly looked through Future Shop’s flyer for this week.

Recall that $25 dollar Virgin airtime card the sales guy said he “couldn’t give away”?  Right in the advert, they’re offering $100 airtime cards with the purchase of any Virgin mobile pay as you go phone.

I’ll update this blog after I have what I intend to make a very interesting meeting with the store’s general manager.

Commentary: “Let’s end disposable marriage”

Leah Ward Sears wrote an interesting article (one of the few I find on CNN) which can be read
here.
It talks about the “re-establishment of equity and balance and sanity within the American family”, and that it should be made more difficult to get married.  I’ve heard sarcastic comments that a marriage license should involve taking a course and so forth.  Marriage, in itself, has altered considerably in terms of the morals and the legalities involved, and divorce has gone right along side it.  We hear repeatedly one famous Hollywood couple getting divorced after a short time, one or both parties hook up with another Hollywood name.  Just what HAS changed with marriage and divorce, and what more really needs to?

Changes in morality have certainly underpinned how we have gone from divorce not being an option to being an option for almost any reason.  Many moons ago, Christians were not allowed to divorce at all except in extenuating circumstances, more often than not at the whim of the male population.  Today, most of my generation has heard the ominous “one in ten” statistic.  I have friends who have been divorced, and who are currently in one stage or another of it.  The tie between common morals and marriage/divorce are inseparable, but like most things in modern society, one is not keeping pace with the other.

At our most fundamental, human beings were not designed for monogamy instinctively.  It’s impossible to imagine a world of human beings where sexual instincts were allowed and acknowledged freely, and yet more and more we hear of alternative lifestyles coming to the forefront as human beings explore freedom of sexuality.  Marriage really began as an institution, one that essentially was the purchase of a daughter from a father.  Love was sometimes there, and sometimes the father would veto his daughter marrying one man in favour of a more wealthy one simply because the father’s returns would be higher.  Other cultures developed arranged marriages as a societal norm.

Once women in Western society were no longer legally considered the property of men, the playing field began to even.  However, it was still considered abnormal for a woman to NOT want to get married–the idea was, you finished high school, and eventually you got married and had kids.  Divorce was still slanted towards the man, though–a man could commit adultery and his wife would still have one hell of a time getting a divorce.

In her commentary, Sears writes of her brother, who went through a painful divorce and ultimately committed suicide because he was considered “a mere visitor of his children”.  This would seem to be extreme.  However, she believes that

“…..the United States and a host of Western democracies are engaged in an unintended campaign to diminish the importance of marriage and fatherhood. By refusing to do everything we can to stem the rising rate of divorce and unwed childbearing, our country often isolates fathers (and sometimes mothers) from their children and their families.”

a mere visitor of his children.

What herself and ultimately her brother, as so many people appear to believe, is that the only way of life is to get married, have children, and stay together for the rest of your natural lives.  However, this is more and more becoming at odds with the current awakening of sexuality, and leading to a huge moral impasse on what exactly marriage is and what it’s for.

Although religious adherents prescribe a spiritual union, nation-states rarely pay it much heed.  The only thing governments are concerned with in terms of marriage is the legal contract–the financial union.  Married couples present more of an opportunity for tax income, and for the economy because a combined income generally means more spending power.  This is the same within all marriages, regardless of the religion or their varying ceremonies, and is virtually ignored by the government except on a statistical level.  Hold on, all you religious fanatics: I’m not trying to take away from the spirituality of marriage, for you.  For the increasing majority of us who either don’t subscribe to a religion, however, we need to rethink the reasoning behind marriage if we wish to curb the divorce rate.

Because of the ever-increasing openness of human sexuality, we are becoming more and more aware that the concepts of love and sex are not necessarily tied together.  Two years into an otherwise successful marriage, and one or both partners come to the realization that the “spark” is no longer there, and decide that love is gone, therefore marriage should be over.  These people typically go looking for new relationships, that “spark”, repeatedly, mistaking each spark for the real thing.  Is it possible to lose that spark and still maintain a marriage?  It may come as a surprise to some people that the marriages with the most longevity involve couples who agree that love can also last in the form of a close friendship, and while they agree not to “play the field”, it becomes more about companionship than that initial “spark”, especially after all the children have moved out on their own.

A lot of couples have touted the concept of the “open marriage”–where both partners maintain their relationship but are able to have sexual relations outside of the marriage, or “swinging”, where couples freely engage in sex with other couples.  What does this mean for divorce rates?  Guess what….the majority of couples who are in open marriages or “swinging” relationships report that they are happier in their marriage than those who report that either they had to quit due to jealousy issues or outright divorced.

This is an example, perhaps, of how morality and marriage have not exactly kept pace with each other.  On one hand, we have a human population widening their sexual horizons while keeping a healthy family together, and on the other, people who believe that you still get married in order to increase the human population, maybe get some pleasure out of it, but that’s it.  We can see how a good chunk of the divorce rate in Western society, then, is due more to sexual repression than the loss of love between partners.  It really comes down to communcation–if monogamy suits your marriage, then there is nothing wrong with this so long as it suits both partners;  when it doesn’t, maintaining monogamy at all costs because it’s the “moral” thing to do may cost you that marriage.

In essence, perhaps the concept of marriage as we know it now does not need to change, or the concept of the family–we have to open our moral standards up to allow more for innate human instinct that will keep the home fires burning.  So long as the children of any coupling are cared for by both parents, provided for by both parents, the nature of the relationship really doesn’t matter.  Ideally, having an equal influence of both mother and father is shown to provide a more healthy mentality in children.  Romantically, we all want to have that “soul mate” that will go through life together with us, but if we can’t write the terms for our relationships that allow for more openness (with consent of both parties) sexually, then eventually things will go sour and the marriage will end.  Moral conservatism means that we are under pressure to conform to a single model of marriage, which may be causing more harm than good.

Something that I’ve told every couple, married or not, that is of the utmost importance is free communication.  A few ideas:

1. Live together before getting engaged.  A trial period before entering into the marriage contract will certainly give both parties a good idea if they can live together or not.  Here is where those moral instincts will come into play, as well as those annoying habits that may make the situation unliveable;
2. Are you the marriage type?  There should be zero–i mean, ZERO–necessity in modern society to get married in the first place.  I know people who are perfectly content to remain in the casual relationship sphere.  Giving into the ol’ family pressure to “settle down and marry the girl” might seem okay at first, but if you’re not into it, and you’re content with companionship and casual relationships, then there is absolutely nothing wrong with this.
3. Know thyself and thy partner, sexually as well as otherwise.  If you know at your core that you don’t want to stick to one partner for the rest of your life, say so.  If your partner decides the relationship isn’t for her, marriage won’t change those feelings, and you save yourselves an incredible amount of pain in the process.  This also applies during the marriage, because people do change, and when the humdrum feels like it’s setting in, it may not be time to get divorced–it may simply be time to try new things and recharge the marriage batteries.

I’m sure there are other tips–by way of hundreds of books on the subject of what keeps a marriage working.  But I also feel that by adhering to antiquated marriage laws and the morals that surround it, we may be splitting up more families than we save, and causing a lot more heartache and hurt children along the way.

sometimes i need to be reminded of why i vote….

I had an idle thought today.  Would it not be kinda neat to set up a photo opportunity with Michael Ignatieff and Paris Hilton?  Or Britney Spears?  Or the ever-twisting Brad/Angela/Jennifer combination?

Seems ridiculous?  So is the barrage of attack adverts against Ignatieff by the Conservatives.  I had only just commented to my wife on the fact that I can’t turn on the television without seeing the commercials, when my ever-punctual postwoman delivered a nicely printed black and white pamphlet reiterating the same issues, and directing me to a website, michaelignatieff.me, which…..well, reiterated the same issues.

Ignatieff.  Just Visiting.

Let me start off by saying that I’m not a screaming Ignatieff fan.  From an armchair warrior perspective, he can speak much more eloquently than his predecessor, Stephane Dion, has more personality, and a few ideas.  But I haven’t even been able to get to his ideas (yes, I know they’re probably on the federal Liberal’s web site) because of the blinding flash of all these attack ads.

From these ads, we know that he’s been quoted as looking to raise taxes in a few fields.  He was out of the country for 34 years and apparently showed up just in time to become the leader of the Liberal Party.  (I have a vision of Mr. Ignatieff running into the leadership convention, hair a mess, sweaty from running, going “Have they elected a leader yet?”) 

On the back of the pamphlet, it’s further made clear that the Conservatives are the ones fixing the country while Ignatieff wants to ruin it.

Perhaps I enjoy being offended, but I decided to take the pamphlet’s offer to visit michaelignatieff.me.  An elaborate website exists, the first page of which we see a mock-up magazine cover with various quotes, pictures and faux-cover stories like “Visitor’s Guide:  What To Do When Your Visit May Be Brief”.  And, oh my goodness!  You have the ability to watch the same ads that you’ve seen on television, you can actually read the aforementioned faux-cover stores in magazine-like layouts.  But ,Conservative fans, there’s more!  For fun, you can create your own custom anti-Ignatieff magazine cover, and share it with your friends, or even on Facebook!  You can “give the gift of Ignatieff” by sending the site to friends!  And, of course, true to the nature of an online tabloid, I can also subscribe and get all the dirt that’s fit to print about Ignatieff.

Not that I’d want the Conservatives to have my e-mail address.  Could get messy.

I see a lot of this in the Conservative propaganda, and I paraphrase:  Ignatieff’s policies are going to cost a fortune, raise taxes and drive Canada into the ground.  Ignatieff hates Canada.  How dare he even consider raising taxes in the middle of a recession?  I have one burning question, however:  How much did it cost to film the attack ads and make sure they’re given maximum commercial airtime on Canadian TV?  How much did it cost to print 30-odd-million copies of the pamphlet and have Canada Post deliver them?  And….how much did it cost for someone to design such an elaborate web site, and how much does it cost now to host it?

It doesn’t take someone with a doctorate in political science to realize that some of the Canada-bashing quotes we’re being assaulted with are probably taken out of context.  Not that I’m stirring up conspiracy theories, but I have a difficult time trusting a web site that provides short video snippets and short quotes from various articles.  You can bet I’ll be doing further reading on this stuff to try and wring some substance out of it–right now, I’m posting from the opinion of what an average Canadian is seeing.  My general theory is that Ignatieff, while off actually doing good things in other countries, was simply pissed off about the state of affairs in Canada, and maybe, just possibly, thought that it was time to come back and do something about it.

I’ve certainly made disparaging comments about Canada.  Like any democratic country, it has some serious flaws.  This doesn’t mean I hate Canada–like any relationship, you’re going to have some serious disagreements.  And, like any politician, most of his policies leave enough ambiguity to “opt-out” later when necessary.

Beyond Ignatieff’s real agenda, beyond his policies, beyond anything else the Conservatives want to throw at him….there’s something that frightens me a lot more.  The wording of a lot of this propaganda–like the fact that Ignatieff’s grandfather was “a minister under Russia’s last czar” (he has ties to a non-democratic government), that he lives “just a stone’s throw away from his closest advisors ‘The Rosedale Gang’” (that he’s something akin to a Mafia-style politician), that he’d only come back if “the back room boys ran his campaign” (same), and a whole page devoted to comparing Ignatieff to Stephane Dion, who is well known in Canada for being almost a non-entity….you get the picture.  This style of persuasion has been used for many years by many democratic governments:  He hates your country.  Look at him, he’s an elitist. He’s a communist.  He goes against every decent, god-mom-apple pie, patriotic bit you possibly stand for.

Enter smiling Stephen Harper, a guy who, when he does allow his cabinet members to speak, adopts a “speak first, apologize later” policy, believes that fixing the economy means reverting to billions of dollars in deficit spending.  Think of this one point–either Ignatieff can raise taxes now, or whoever is PM after the final tally of the recession is delivered will have to.   But it’s a pot-kettle-black thing here.  I’m Canadian.  I’ve been given enough of an education to figure out facts for myself.

I don’t like my time being wasted by attack ads which are obviously being paid for out of my tax dollars.  It’s worthless.  All I know is that if that Harper has in any way tainted my opinion of Ignatieff, he’s certainly tainted my opinion of him in the process.

Remind me why I vote again?

An epic sale FAIL: Summitt Energy Canada came a-callin…..’

I decided that rather than try to paraphrase my experience with a door-to-door salesman from Summitt Energy Canada, I’d simply repost the e-mail I’ve sent to them.  And I plan on linking to this through my Twitter account and through Facebook, so hopefully more people can slam the door in Summitt Energy’s face when they come calling.

Here’s the text of the letter:

——————————————

To whom it may concern:

I am writing to relate a recent experience with a door-to-door sales agent for your company who may have possibly created the worst experience I have ever had with any representative for any company.  Fortunately I have the name and representative number of this employee.

On June 23, 2009, a Mr. Shaun Nichols, whose representative number is JT 1003, came to my door and identified himself as being from Summit Energy.  He asked if I was on Summit’s price protection plan, and advised me that it was something that should have been done shortly after I moved in.  He asked to see one of my recent utility bills, which I did not have to hand but knew full well that the name Summit Energy was nowhere on these bills.  He again implied that Summit Energy’s protection plan was a matter of course and that if it hadn’t been put in place before, that it was a mistake and we could get underway immediately. 

He asked me if I knew where energy prices were going in the next 5 years, and, given the fact that I do own a car and keep tabs in the news on oil and other energy prices, said “yes”.  He then showed me a graph that was intended to explain how Summit’s price protection worked.  It was implied at this time that my energy prices per unit would be fixed at the current rate for some time.

Upon advising him that I did not have either my gas or hydro bill immediately available to him, he told me that I could sign the registration form, and that in a few weeks he would call back to fill in the account numbers from my energy bills.  I advised Mr. Nichols that I do not sign anything without researching things first, at which point he proceeded to get very argumentative, assuring me that nothing would come of it if I just signed now.  I again told Mr. Nichols that I do not put my signature on anything that quickly, and he decided to ask me questions like “You are aware that energy costs are going up?”  and “So, you researched London Hydro before signing on with them?” in an almost insulting tone of voice.  In fact, I did research London Hydro even though they’re the only game in town, so to speak, and actually learned I’d be helping pay off the former Ontario Hydro’s debt.  Good to know.  I told Mr. Nichols this, and his answer was “Do you like paying those costs?”

In the end, he handed me the registration form, filled out except for my signature and account numbers, some information, and told me he would return for the registration form later.

Fortunately, he didn’t come back.

Being conversant in legal language, reasonably intelligent and cautious, I first decided to look at the fine print at the bottom of the registration form.  This is what I learned:

1. “This agreement is with Summit Energy and is not with my local electricity or natural gas distributor.”  Mr. Nichols implied that Summit Energy walked hand in hand with London Hydro to provide these “amazing” prices and that signing up is simply a matter of course.  In fact, your company is a licensed electricity and natural gas retailer, which means that the only hand London Hydro would have in this is distributing the product and handing me a bill.

2. “Unless agreed to in writing by Summit, no amendments, either written or verbal, to this Registration Form or Customer Agreement with Terms and Conditions will be accepted.”  So, quite literally, if I had signed, I would have no rights except the legally supplied one to cancel within 10 days.  The month that Mr. Nichols had given me is over that 10 days, by which time I would be legally bound to switch over to you.

3. “I authorize my utility to provide Summit Energy my account number, which we may include in the space above.”  This would mean that if Mr. Nichols had called me back in one month, and I refused to give him the account numbers and said I did not want service from Summit, that your company has every right to contact Union Gas and London Hydro and get the information anyway.

As you can see, Mr. Nichols gravely misrepresented legal information in attempting to get me to sign.  Sign here, and I call back in a month to be told “Well, sir, you had 10 days to cancel, which you didn’t do, and you gave us the right to get your account information.  Welcome to Summit Energy.”

Further research revealed that my price would not be fixed at the current regulated rates, but at a fairly higher rate that I would presume is a median between now and 5 years from now.  I would not be saving any money initially, but possibly breaking even over a 5 year term, with your company reaping the benefits.  I am guessing that your company also reserves the right to adjust the fixed rate higher in certain circumstances, but I did not research Summit further than this.  The point being that Mr. Nichols did not advise that initial rates would be higher than the current regulated rates.

Mr. Nichols lied about the very nature of Summit Energy’s business, omitted key legal and pricing information, argued with me about the use of my own signature and outright mocked the fact that I research companies before entering into a legally binding contract, and attempted to lock me into said contract by doing an end run around Ontario’s legal requirements in such matters.  In fact, the only thing he did correctly, required by law, was to give me the “Important Information about Customer Choice from Ontario Energy Retailers” pamphlet, which was informative after the fact.

To be blunt:  I never, ever wish to see Mr. Nichols or any other representative of Summit Energy on my property again.  Should someone show up, I will be obtaining their name and rep number and contacting you after politely asking them to get off my property.  I am also considering forwarding a copy of this letter to the Ontario Energy Association, and I hope never to be contacted in any way, shape or form, by your company in the future.  I will be tearing up the registration form.

If Mr. Nichols does not represent the common sales practices of your company, then I hope he is suitably disciplined for his actions.

Thank you,
Jason Norwood

[Update: I did receive an apology from Summitt Energy, but it was so form-based that I really don't entertain much hope that the agent in question will ever hear about my complaint.]