Wickedness

I hate OG&E so much. Every year, this company tries new tactics to make money for their investors to the detriment of their customers. I have no problem with a company making a fair amount of money for the services they render, but for years now, that's not been OG&E's plan.

This article outlines their latest plot. They want to increase rates on usage. They always want this. It would cost people money, but in the long run, people have found ways to control this. Mind you, their methods aren't comfortable. People force themselves to suffer in the heat for longer amounts of time. For instance, we don't turn on our AC until it's 95.

The problem is, OG&E knows people do this. They realize customers will just use less power to try and offset the increase. So their new tactic is to add money onto the bill in ways people can't control. The first is to double the customer charge. No one can do a damned thing about this. Just for having the service turned on, even if you don't use it, you'd still be charged almost 27$ per month.

The second tactic, more insidious, is a new charge called the 'demand' charge. It would add fees for use of electricity during peek hours. Like the customer charge, this fee would be mandatory. Unlike the customer fee, this one wouldn't be set. It could be anywhere from 18$ to 30$ and given that very few people have the technology to know how much power they're using during peak hours, they would have no way of controlling this.

So far, no state has allowed this demand charge to go through for companies that have investors. Then again, this is Oklahoma and our congress is populated by idiots and sociopaths.