Lying about your gas meter readings...

They dont " Must Do " anything.

Reply to
ransley
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I'm in NYS (ConEd). I didn't know they did this. Not that it matters, but no dealings that I've had with the company -- and there have been MANY, right at their headquarters at Union Square (manhattan) -- indicated their interest of any information of that sort.

I know they are concerned about kids/elderly in the case of turn off's, but that was it, afaik.

Reply to
Existential Angst

There's almost never anyone at my home (NYC) when the reader comes, so we read it and submit it via internet - or if we forget we get an estimated bill. Once or twice a year someone is home when they come by so I don't know what happens if you go a year. No one counts how many people live in the house though.

I guess it's possible to jiggle the numbers for both gas and electric so you save a bit, but it really seems too minor to bother with.

Reply to
dgk

Of course it's stealing. It's the same as going to a store and buying bolts that are sold loose. You go to the checkout and when they are regular price, you tell the clerk you have 50, when you really have

  1. Then when they are on sale you reverse the process. The net result is you're not paying the correct price for the product received. In the case of the gas, if he were caught, they had the proof and decided to prosecute the charge would be "theft by deception".

Guess who makes up the difference? The rest of us. But one can only wonder about a couple of things:

What kind of idiot does this and then goes to a party and talks about it? Who knows who happens to be there or who they will tell?

How much can the price of gas vary from summer to winter, how much of a discrepancy and shifting can you get away with so that they don't become suspicous, etc and still have it make enough savings difference to amount to anything significant. If he's dishonest enough to pull that cheat and tell everyone about it, I'd bet he's up to a lot of other crap too.

Reply to
trader4

It is a regulatory requirement in my state. They must read the meter at least once/year. It doesn't really matter anymore because the two gas suppliers that serve our region put remote reading registers on all meters that are not directly accessible maybe three or four years ago. Then the one company that serves my house put remote reading registers on all of the meters late summer of last year.

Along the same lines the water company put outside accessible readers on all of their meters maybe 5 years ago and the electric company swapped out all of their meters last year with meters they can read over the powerline. It also is a great help for them because they no longer have to depend on folks calling in when someone hits a pole. When they loose contact with meters they know the scope of the problem and right where to go.

Reply to
George

In all ACTUALITY, the gas price does not vary seasonally. It varies with the contracts they buy it on. It can go up or down at any time.

Reply to
Steve Barker

Likely someone without a life who likes to tell stories thinking they are impressing everyone and not realizing they look stupid.

I had a acquaintance who was just like that. He would weave stories to impress everyone about clever he was. One day it was about a notebook computer. The story was that somehow he bought it and trashed it and claimed he was gyped and they gave him his money back and then gave him a new one for 20% of the cost because he threatened to sue them and was talking really loud so they did it to hush him up. Only thing was the receipt for a full price notebook fell out of the bag when he went to display his trophy.

Reply to
George

This approximates the "averaging" monthly payment programmes some utility companies offer clients.

Reply to
Don Phillipson

"Steve Barker" wrote

That depends on where you live and who the supplier is. Gas can and does vary greatly in some places. Price can be fixed or varied and some even offer options of either to choose from. When you get into large industrial users, you may even pay for gas you did not use and the really huge users can have prices vary a couple times during the day and metering is by the hour.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

quoted text -

But if the utility co offeres him the option it its ok ! So he pays more in summer, you have heard of company locked in contracts that all utilities I know of offer or average year pricing to spread out the burden, he is paying in a higher dollar in summer, loosing interest, giving free interest use to the utility in hope of a higher winter price. If prices dont rise he looses just as last winter my prices didnt rise. I look at it not as theft but forward purchase to ease a burden or spread out payments. The futures markets are designed and operate on this premise, he basicly locks in a price himself and pre pays as a gamble. Ive seen people loose on lock in utility Co future deals as prices dropped think of heating oil contracts. Look the different ways he looses and can loose, its not so immoral when viewed as future or contract pricing with risk and loss of interest and use of the cash. The first thing the utility companies offer fincially burdened is average pricing, it helps with those gas bills at -10f.

Reply to
ransley

de quoted text -

Yeah, it's like ONE HALF of that kind of deal. The only problem is, that is NOT what his contract with the gas company says and they don't know he's doing it. Consequently, the gas company is not adding his demand to the amount of gas that they hedge on the futures market or with suppliers.

A bank robber can lose too, by getting caught. Or somebody that steals copper out of a vacant house might realize later that it took a lot more work removing it than the amount they received at the scrap yard was worth. Those are theft too. Of how about I bought your house 2 years ago and now it's worth $30K less. So, I decide it's OK for me to come steal some stuff from you to make up for it, because there was a way for me to lose and I did?

Which of course has nothing to do with this, because first there is no indication the guy is financially strapped and second, even if he is, any special programs for the needy are supposed to be reserved for those truly in need. My gas company offers that averaging program for everyone. All they are doing is averaging out the total cost of gas for the year based on prior usage into equal installments, not changing the price of gas they deliver. If you use more gas in winter than they planned for, then you still pay the full price for that gas, they just increase the payments at some point to make up for it over time. This guy is skewing the demand when the gas price is low so that he pays a lower price than the other legitimate customers. . What he is doing is making the honest customers pay more for their gas.

Reply to
trader4

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