TXU

Anyone who knows me, know that brevity is not one of my gifts.  With that said, I will try and keep this vignette short, because I want each of you to read the entire piece, as I feel it will give an inside view to the corrupt world of power companies.

Two years ago, when I initially moved to Dallas with my sister, we set up our apartment with TXU as our electrical provide.  Besides the outrageous energy rates, the first few months went by without any problems. In December of 2005, we noticed that we did not receive a bill for November. January rolled around and we did not receive a bill for December.

Alarmed, we contacted TXU.  As an aside, I’ll let you know that I can see the TXU building from my dining room.  However, my call was transferred to a call center in India where we were forced to speak to poorly paid foreigner who obviously spoke broken English with no knowledge of American idioms.  After a 45 minute conversation, the Indian informed us that our apartment did not have any electricity.  Literally, those were his words, “your apartment has no electricity.” Obviously, we knew better and informed that in fact we did have power.

He suggested that we contact the Texas Utilities Commission, as he feared our power had been slam, a process in which electric companies illegally switch your provide without your permission.  A quick call to this agency soon proved that this was not the case and we dismissed the problem entirely.  After all, why should we worry about TXU’s problem?

Well, I came home from work one day in March to find that our electricity had been turned off. Immediately, I stormed down to the leasing office to explain our situation.  Magically, the leasing agent seemed to have the answer to our problem.

The leasing office located in the lobby of our building serves as the leasing office for a building recently built across the street.  Evidently, someone moved into the building across the street, in an identical apartment number, and used the address from the leasing office’s business cards.  TXU assumed that we had moved out and transferred the account from our name to the new guys name, without contacting us.  In short, this guy was being billed and his invoices were being returned to TXU because of improper address.

The leasing agent attempted to call TXU to explain the mix-up.  Remember what I said about TXU headquarters being located less than 5 minutes from building, but their call center being located in India?  Well, obviously explaining a situation like this requires a good working knowledge of the English language and requires more than the ability to read a script off of a computer. It took us three hours to finally reach someone who spoke English and could put in an emergency order for our power to be restored.

March and April passed by without any more issues, but May rolled around with no bill for April.  Again, we contacted TXU and again they told us that there was no power in our apartment. Again, they were wrong and again I would come back home from work in June to find the power cut off.  Again, the jack ass across the street had used the wrong address.

This time the leasing office offered to have the power restored on the building’s account, to be transferred to our account at a later date.  We agreed and reopened our TXU account in July.  The leasing office sent us an invoice for the time period in which the power was in their name and we wrote a check to cover the difference.  Finally, it appeared that all of our bases had been covered.

Not so fast…

In September, we received another disconnect notice from TXU, stating that we owed over $600.00.

Hold up playa, I like it cold, but we’ve never used that much electricity in one month.

When we transferred the power back into our name, from the leasing office, TXU had closed down the leasing office’s account.  The check they sent to TXU was then forwarded back to them, since you cannot pay on a closed account. This forced us to pay TXU the money and wait for the leasing office to reimburse us, but we did avoid having the embarrassment and hassle of having our power cut off.

You read this story and there are a lot of idiots in the ring, TXU, the dude across the street, and the leasing office. However, a co-worker recently shared with me a similar story about her dealings with TXU that lead me to believe that they may shoulder a majority of the blame.

Seriously, I’d welcome any of you out there to share any positive stories you may have dealing with TXU.

Islami Fascists II

 

 

I wrote about this previously, but saw this article on MSNBC this morning and felt compelled to raise the issue once again. 

 

While the Bush administration touts Iraq, the media bombards us with horror stories of a nuclear North Korea and the Democrats talk sex, the Islami-fascists continue to destroy Somalia. 

 

Why should we care?

 

Like the regressive Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the Islami-fascists trying to control Somalia seek to establish a government based on the principles of sharia law. Do we really need another Afghanistan? God knows the average American didn’t even realize that Afghanistan was a country prior to 9/11, much less understand the nature of the religious nuts that ran the country.

 

At least with Somalia there is some recent history.  Sadly, we didn’t finish our mission in that country.  For political reasons, many on the left would like us to pull out of Iraq, just like we did in Somalia.  It’s safe to assume that if we pulled out of Iraq now it too would turn into another Afghanistan or Somalia.  That’s why in spite of my objections to the war in Iraq, I feel it’s imperative that we maintain our presence.

 

Did the Bush administration lie? No doubt…

 

Should we have attacked Iran instead of Iraq? Of course…

 

But it’s too late to second guess.  We’ve left Iraq with no legitimate government and no legitimate army and the minute we pulled our troops out the world would have on more government led by militant Muslims. Let this story be reminder of why, regardless of your political affiliation, we must “stay the course” in Iraq.