Read how Redd is Seeing Red Over Red Flag Bullshit!
So... I've moving to a new place, but I need to keep electricity turned on at the old place for a while.
Not an unusual case for a lot of people.
If you are selling a house for example, you might move before the house is sold off. You don't want to cut the power though. Or maybe you are moving and just want to take your time and keep both places for a while. Or maybe you just bought a vacation home and want to keep power at both locations permanantly... whatever...
So I was suprised when I called Duke Energy today and they refused to turn on power at my new place unless I also put in a disconnect order for the old place.
WTF?!?!
In my particular case, I am just getting my house repossessed, but I don't quite know when exactly yet. I didn't want to get caught flat-footed when the foreclosure went to the next step -- the "get the fuck out" step. So I've already moved to an apartment and need power turned on there.
But I don't want the old house to get damaged by the extreme south carolina summer before it is sold... afterall, the better it sells on the auction block the less I'm likely to get nailed for in the end. Plus it is kinda rude to let a perfectly fine house go to shit.
So I was calling Duke Energy to get new power service at my apartment, and was suprised that they were completely unwilling to connect power at both places. The rep said it had something to do with the "red flag laws that were passed in November".
And I'm like... the fucking what laws?
She gives me some poorly informed speach about a law that was supposed to prevent identity theft being passed and that to protect its customers from identity theft they no longer allowed concurrent service unless the second property was a rental property.
I asked exactly which law this was and if it was a state or federal law, but she apparently didn't know anything more about it.
I could have taken that as an answer, but at this point I'm horridly curious. There have to be a LOT of people that pay for power in more than one residence at the same time.
So I'm asking... so what do I do if I own two houses?
And she says, well you'll have to disconnect power from one of them unless one of them is rental property.
I asked about how exactly this was supposed to help protect my identity, but the answer was incoherent (clearly the rep had no idea).
er....
er....
I got cut-off from this customer service rep (cell phones rock that way!).
So I called back and got a different rep... and I went though it again.... and got the same answers again. And this rep was also unable to cite me the exact law or even tell me if it was federal or state law.
The only thing new I learned was that they could turn on power as long as they had a disconnect order for the other place, but I didn't have to disconnect right away. I could set the disconnect date in the future and run both concurrently for a while. And if I needed to change the disconnect date later, I could just call back and let them know.
So I just set a disconnect date for 6 weeks from now at the old place and she was more than happy to turn on service at the new place.
Before she finished up with me though, I followed up with a final question. I told her that I was thinking of buying a condo that was for sale and renting it out, but I'd want keep the power in my name. Since she'd mentioned rental propertiy I asked if there was anything special I needed to do when I needed to turn on service at that property.
She said, no... just call us and let us know it is a rental property and we can turn on your service within 72 hours.
WTF?!
ARRRRRGGGGggggg!
After I got off the phone, I went digginng to find out what fucked up law is responsible for this completely idiotic polilcy.
It is a set of FTC "rules" (not exactly a law, but may as well be) passed back in 2003 that took effect in November 2008.
The intent of the rules are to get certain institutions to do stuff to keep people from using someone else's identity. Mostly it was aimed at financial institutions, but covers some other industries... like my power company apparently. The idea is that the instituations have to have mechanisms (which are poorly defined) in place to detect and prevent people from signing up for accounts using someone else's identity.
Seems harmless... and in 2003 it was pretty far-thinking regulation actually.
From what I can gather, the intention was for the institutions to actually check your ID out more thouroughly if a "red flag" situation is encountered (thus the street name of the rule). Red flags are situations that are suspisious and could be the result of an attempted identity theft.
OK!
As well intentioned as the FTC's idea is though, it has failed.
Duke Energy is either too incompetent to actually check your ID, or the FTC rules are simply too difficult to adhere to without risking penalties from the FTC... so Duke simply decided that the best way to deal with it was to unilaterally deny any request that would result in one of those red flag situations in the first place.
I can see that a red flag would get raised when the power company gets a request for new power service from a residential customer who already has an account for another location. I've seen it happen more than a few times. Someone kicks out a roomate or gets a divorce and the other party turns on power at the new place using their former co-resident's identity.
Sure... fine... nice of the FTC to want to discourage that crap.
But instead of just checking my ID like the FTC rules intended, the power company just feels safer not letting me have power at two locations. I guess that's cheaper than having to pay the FTC crap-loads of fines if they accidentally failed to protect an ID somewhere.
And even better, the FTC's new rules do absolutly nothing to stop that same aggreved roomate from going to another city with a diffrent power company and still using someone else's identity to hook up their power anyway.
And even more ironic... you can setup power using a stolen identity just by telling the rep on the phone that your new location is rental property. Apparently there are no requirments to prove that you are renting it out or anything... you just have to tell them you are and you can setup as many accounts as you want.
Good job guys! Thanks for looking out for us there!
