Uncooperative

Tallapoosa River Electric Cooperative, Inc. has an odd name. I usually don't think of a co-op as being a corporation. This co-op has all the earmarks of being a corporation. It includes the "Inc." behind it's name. It makes you wonder a little. I'm not sure what the status of this corporation is, really. They are decidedly a monopoly. When I said I was not sure how safe the power was, and that they did not answer that question in my letter, he said something like "Well, we'll turn it off right now if you believe you are unsafe or that is it going to cause a fire." I said, "Well I'm asking you whether it is safe or unsafe. If you feel it is unsafe, please come immediately and turn off my power. All I need is for you to put in writing that my power is unsafe by your judgement." He changed the subject.

Someone that is this smug about his company knows he does not have any competition. If I paid over a hundred dollars a month for any other service, I'm sure they would take me very seriously. They take me seriously over monthly billing that is far less than a hundred dollars a month.

According to the company, my only course of action is in contacting the board. I will write a long entry on that experience later. The board is elected by members like me.

I'm still working through all this stuff. AND it is boring. But, I have one statement that is very important to get out to a public forum.

If you are moving into an any area, ask who your power company will be. The city I live in, Opelika AL, is actually serviced by three different companies, but each homeowner has no choice. Could the wires be hooked together and shared. Heck yes. They are within blocks. Imagine the redundancy that would create. There would be no power outages in all likelihood. When one was down, another would take over. This too, I will blog about in the future as I research this more carefully. Boring? Heck yeah!

So, if you are chosing between houses and one house has Tallapoosa River Electric Cooperative, I would suggest you make a very careful decision. My experience has not been good.

I was thinking of calling this Ata Boy Brownout, but I think that was just too obscure. :)