14th Feb 2007
The sheer Hutzpa that they have
Got my electric bill today, courtesy of the IEC (Israel Electric Company).
Along with the bill I got one of those brochures where the IEC details average nation-wide consumption and what they are doing to cope with it. They explain that when demand is higher than production shortages happen. Fine. They say they’re working on boosting capacity. Wonderful.
They go on and say how important it is to backup your computer and protect sensitive equipment during outages. That’s very considerate of them.
They advise that consumers should use heavy-duty appliances during the night to even-out the load on the network… err… huh?
And then, they conclude by saying: “together we will reduce the power outages”.
Hey, I don’t want to reduce power outages together with you; I’m paying a ton of money to use your precious services. That’s exactly the kind of national-socialist talk they had during the 50′s when food was being rationed out because the state of the economy was down the toilet. That’s exactly the kind of talk you get when a monopoly is holding you by the balls.
Can anyone imagine one of the cellphone companies telling a subscriber that “together we will reduce call disconnections”? No way. Because by the time they reach ‘we’ the customer will have switched to their competitors.
The interesting thing here is that the IEC have a marketing department the size of a small town and not a single soul (bless them all) thought it strange to put something like that into the brochure. And in bold, no less.