Yes, that's right, I said dirty thieves obtuse philanthropists.
So I was poking around my electric bill today, and I noticed something that piqued my interest (in a rather not-so-good way). A line-item from the bill:
Operation Roundup: $0.28
What they do is round your bill up to the nearest dollar amount. Why? Because they seem to like fleecing customers in ways that seem harmless. Good question, I ended up having to call them up to find out the answer. It turns out that they give that money to local organizations (like little league, boy scouts, food shelves, etc).
Let's do a bit of math, shall we?
According to the MN Census (taken in 2000), the estimated number of households in Douglas, Kandiyohi, Morrison, Pope, Stearns and Todd counties (the counties which Stearns Electric services) in 2004 are: 116,997 units. For the sake of being friendly, let's say that only 60% of the population of these counties use Stearns Electric (which is very forgiving since there's not much choice in who to use around here). That brings the total down to 70,198 units. Ok, now let's assume that the average household's "round-up" is $0.50. That means that every month, Stearns Electric is bilking its customers for an extra $35,099. That translates into $421,188 a year. Jesus, I wish I could screw people over for a half a million dollars a year. Boy, it sure is nice to know that they're giving back so much to the community.
As you can see, I was originally quite pissed off about this upcharge on my bill. There was no explanation of what the charge was for, no reference to get more information (which they actually have online, and it turns out my math was off -- they give about $88,350 a year), or anything. Just this line item which sounds a bit like a fleecing the customer. So Stearns Electric aren't a bunch of dirty thieves -- they just philanthropize without bothering to tell you about it. I'm glad I called them up to find out what's going on though; I don't mind giving money to local organizations and I think it's a great idea. I just hope they take my suggestion and put more information about it on people's bills. This way, customers like myself don't get into a tizzy because they think they're being ripped off by corporate greed.
Now I'll sheepishly get back to doing something productive instead of trying to beat my shadow up for following me around.
Wow. That's rather astounding. I don't think it's called "philanthropy" when someone makes you pay. For that matter, who gets the tax credits, you or them? And what if you don't want to give money to the folks they donate to? Out in California, we call forcibly taking your money from you and distributing it in ways for which you have a no say a "tax".
That's what I've called it in the past as well, but I don't mind the places they're distributing the money to. I just think it should be an opt-in operation (I don't know if you can opt-out of it, to be honest).
However, they distribute the money based on a board of directors, which are elected from the customer base by the customer base, with all the members being strung out across the area. So it's not that we have *no* say in where the money goes.
Look at your phone bill sometimes. If you're like most people, you're still paying a $2 or so surcharge for the priviledge of using touch-tone dialing instead of pulse dialing. That got tacked on there in the 70s when touch-tone phones were new, and never got removed from their billing even now that:
1) You can't even buy a pulse phone anymore and,
2) Their system has to jump through all sorts of hoops to make pulse dialing work for those few jerks (like me, hehehe) who have working 1950's phones hanging in their kitchen.
If anything, you should get a $2 discount for not having a pulse-dial phone in the house, but go figure. I've always been slightly curious as to what would happen if I called them up and told them to remove that charge... would my touch-tone phones stop working? Or, more likely, would they just ignore me and keep charging it?
So what happened to the other $330,000?
I think my guess at 60% market share was off. Also, units may include apartments, and I think apartments get charged by the building, not by the unit.
Someone already noted this but when you contribute to charity you get to write off the taxable income associated with that donation. Who's writing off the taxable portion of this?
Secondly, there are "universal service" charges on your phone bill to provide service to people who otherwise can't pay. That seems strange to me given that utilities don't have a similiar policy and I recall (working in the schools) several low income families that didn't have phones. Where is that money going?! In addition we've been paying for the spanish-american war since 1898 through a tax on our phone bill (its like 3%). Talk about a rip!
~joe
And that 3% is particularly irksome to folks like me who never wanted to get involved in the Spanish-American war in the first place, especially since they never did manage to find the huge stockpiles of Ranchero sauce.
Theft is theft, no matter the intentions behind the theft.
Try walking into one of their offices and taking a computer, explain to the nice person detaining you that it isnot for any benefit to yourself, but you are bringing it to the homeless shelter down the street, everything ought to be ok.
I live in an apartment and I have to pay electric. I've never looked real closely at my bill. If I remember on my next one, I'll let you know if I've got any ridiculous charges.
I've never really looked. Hm. Assholes:) I've also got XCel...not sure which is better, tho. They're both probably cocksuckers.
In Manitoba, we have a single government run entity that controls our car insurance. It's illegal for Manitobans to buy car insurance from any other organization. And if you don't insure your car, it's illegal to have it on the road.
So a year or two ago, this entity had a $13million surplus (because they overestimated insurance premiums). They decided to give it to a single university here because it was the entity's president's former school. NONE of the public were consulted on the decision. When it can out in the news it was a HUGE scandal, because just days before the article, they had raised premiums AGAIN! So the provincial government stepped in and ordered the entity to pay back the surplus to policy holders, weighted by their regular premium, so the more you tend to pay, the more the more of a percentage of the surplus you would give back.
My opinion is that if an organization has that much money to spare, it should be returning it back to its customers, since it's the overcharging of the customers that gave those surpluses anyways.