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Smart Meter Dte Extorion


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Dte threatens me with termination of service if i dont agree to pay fee for not having a smart metor

 

Example of letter i received

 

 

October 17, 2014

 

my name

 

RE my address city

      metor number *******

 

Dear my name:

 

We are sending you this letter because we have received no response to our previous correspondence and or field visits regarding our advance metering infrastructure (AMI) program.  As of today, you have either not contacted us to enroll in the Opt-Out Program and or have refused us access to our metering equipment.

 

It is imperative that we gain access to our metering equipment located on your property. 

As stated in the Companys Standard and Billing Practice Rule approved by the Michigan Public Service Commission- C5.4- "Access to Premised "as a condition of taking service authorized employees and agent of the Company shall have access to the customers premise at all reasonable hours to install turn on disconnect inspect read repair or remove its meter... Failure of the customer to comply... may result in termination of service after due notice".

 

if acess is not granted, DTE Electric may interrupt your electric service within 15 CALENDAR DAYS of the date on this notice.  If service is interrupted, you will be required to pay a reconnect fee to have your service restored.

 

To prevent interuption of your electic sercie, please call us at 7-800-477-4747 to arrange to have the new advanced meter installed and or enroll in our opt out program.  Please not that providing access to our metering equipment is not optional- it is a requirment with which customers must comply.  We appreciate your cooperation.

 

IF THE METER EXCHANGE HAD ALREADY BEEN COMPLETED AT THE ABOVE ADDREWSS, PLEASE DISREGARD THIS NOTICE.

 

Thank your for being a valued dte electric customer.

 

Sincerely,

 

The Advanced Metering Team

 

 

 

 

 

The letter i received today spent an hour or more on the phone with them today ending with them threatening to come and get there equipment.  I cant opt out without agreeing to pay additional fees anyone else dealt with this.  Do i have any other options but to call back and comply like the Borg i am.

 

I had called DTE on 2 separate times about opting out of the program and thought i was all set.  even stopped the installer a few months ago coming up my drive with new meter in hand he told me he would take care of it get me off the list.

 

I feel like making custards last stand meeting them armed when they try and come on my property i hate having my arm twisted.

 

I only made a reference that i would consider it trespassing if they come on my property to do anything with my present meter and i would act accordingly.  10 minutes later i missed the call from the security division about concerns over there workers safety.  what a mess should of should been a government mule and comply.

 

 

 

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I don't even know if we have a "smart meter". Nobody has installed anything,in fact we have tree branches on our lines,I have called 12 times and they never do anything about it. They are so stupid at DTE that they couldn't even figure out why we had 2 meters after we got the generator installed that we BOUGHT FROM DTE!

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well then dont get a smart meter so you can pay the fee to have the guy come to your house , sniff around, and read your meter every month.

 

or just buy solar panels and wind turbines and tell dte to disconnect you from their power system.

 

people are scared out there.

dont be scared, be prepared.

if you think the smart meter causes more fires, then have the electrical box seperated from your house so it cannot start a fire.

 

if you think big brother, did you register with the state? then you are already in the database. might as well stop worrying and get on with it. if they round us into camps we'll all be there, not just the pot smokers.

 

(watch out for barcodes, those things are evil too :P )

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Not sure there is a good reason to not get the meter.  They already know how much electricity you use.    On the plus side, they no longer need to come close to your house to read the meter.  If you have any odothor control issues that is a good thing.  

 

One added thing.  We have had a smart meter since DTE went from full time employees reading the meter to contract labor.   For 20 years there was no problem with our 3 dogs and the dte meter reader.  As soon they got rid of the union employees, we had a problem.   After a year back and forth with dte customer service/torture they agreed to put in a smart meter.  It has been at least 3 years.  No problems and no one entering our back yard.  All good here

Edited by semicaregiver
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OK for the original poster, dude just sign up for the opt out.. yes they do charge you , but its a one time fee of 69.39. .. and  then an additional 9.72 per month for the manual reader fee... I am with you , i did not take a new meter, I wanted mine, the one already there,, these new smart readers, can tell exactly when your lights come one and off, and how many of them lights you are running, it identifies all loads on your house,, basically it can tell when you turn on a single item, and it tells them when and how many watts, voltage an amps.... way more than they needed to know.. so i opted out,, i could be out a buck or two on the costs, but it was real close, in reality they can see everything electrical you do and plot a graph of the time of day/night.. and to me that is not cool.. besides if you dont do it, think of the poor meter reader, outta work, and robbing your grow to make ends meet..thats a joke, but they will be outta work.. 

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i have read that the smart meters are more prone to start fires and just a general big brother dislike

As long as your legal you will be fine Ive had mine for 10 months with no issues or LEO visits as long as your bills paid DTE could care less about an abnormal amount of juice being utilized in your home.

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I have not heard of a single case in Michigan where a meter reader gave a tip that lead to LEO enforcement.

 

You don't have a lot of options for electrical service - basically you deal with the system or make your own.

 

DTE doesn't care what is growing in the basement.  They just want their money.

I know for a fact that they have done it, blaming the meter as an excuse, then reporting it,,, granted it was in calif.. big deal there! due to the high electrical theft by growers of black market meds/weed..

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As long as your legal you will be fine Ive had mine for 10 months with no issues or LEO visits as long as your bills paid DTE could care less about an abnormal amount of juice being utilized in your home.

that could be true bro, but every couple months i get the standard , your using 4000% more electric than your neighbors with a similar home,, call us if we can come and recommend to help you save costs and do an inspection of your meter for errors.  I have in the past called and told them that I had aquariums , lots of them, 100+ .. after i explained they quit sending me letters... anyway in my paranoid mind,, , thats sniffin around...

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As long as your legal you will be fine Ive had mine for 10 months with no issues or LEO visits as long as your bills paid DTE could care less about an abnormal amount of juice being utilized in your home.

how do you know that? how many leo's have busted into otherwise legal grows and still ruined lives? being legal only helps when you're in court, and just maybe. It certainly has not offered protection from arrests, search and seizures and even property forfeiture.

 

FTG!

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that could be true bro, but every couple months i get the standard , your using 4000% more electric than your neighbors with a similar home,, call us if we can come and recommend to help you save costs and do an inspection of your meter for errors.  I have in the past called and told them that I had aquariums , lots of them, 100+ .. after i explained they quit sending me letters... anyway in my paranoid mind,, , thats sniffin around...

you should have asked them if they could help you lower your costs running HPS lamps to grow marijuana. i wonder what they would say

 

(seriously, someone call them and record it for fun)

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i want a new meter so i can send electricity both ways..

 

when the power goes off and the generator kicks in... any excess electricity can be "sent" into the grid... and consumers will pay you happily for that..

 

but you have to have a new meter.. a smart meter that is capable of reading electrical flow both directions... the older analog dial system is not.

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that could be true bro, but every couple months i get the standard , your using 4000% more electric than your neighbors with a similar home,, call us if we can come and recommend to help you save costs and do an inspection of your meter for errors.  I have in the past called and told them that I had aquariums , lots of them, 100+ .. after i explained they quit sending me letters... anyway in my paranoid mind,, , thats sniffin around...

Well, it is really in the best interest of the utility company to reduce your use, which seems counterintuitive because you'd assume that the more juice you use, the more money they make.

But understand that the utility company makes the most money from monthly fees on a meter and not so much from the actual use. 

 

The economics of the power business used to baffle me.  For 30+ years, we have heard the message from the power companies of “reduce the use.”  It initially seems odd that an electrical utility company would spend money to help us all reduce our use…offering CFLs to school kids, low-flow shower heads, etc. for free.  It didn’t make any sense.

 

I attended a brownfield redevelopment conference in 1996, sponsored by MichCon.  Their sales/marketing person (I think her name was Kelly Fenally) gave me a good answer.  She explained to me that since a power plant has a limited capacity, it is far more profitable to run one power plant and service as many individual users as possible from that plant than it would be to build a second plant and be able to service more customers.  In other words, power companies LOVE lots of meters

 

Think of it this way.  If you have a coal-fired power plant to generate electricity and service 100,000 homes with it, you might charge 10 to 15 cents per kilowatt/hour for the use.  Then you charge about $8/month for the meter itself.  Even if the customer shuts off the main breaker and uses no electricity, you still make $8 per month.  So, the more meters you can hang, the more money you make.

 

If the power company can hang 200,000 meters instead of 100,000 with the same total electrical use, they won’t sell any additional electrical use.  But they can charge a per-meter rate that substantially ups their profit.  In the eyes of a power company, more meters/more users = more profit.

 

Think about it on the small scale.  If you have a house and grow mmj and have one meter, you pay about $8 per month minimum plus your use.  If you decide to hang a meter on the barn and move your grow there, you get hit with another monthly per/meter fee.  Same use of juice, but two meters = more money to the utility company.

So that’s what this comes down to.  CE/CMS/DTE all want to hang as many meters as possible, because that’s their profit center.

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Well, it is really in the best interest of the utility company to reduce your use, which seems counterintuitive because you'd assume that the more juice you use, the more money they make.

But understand that the utility company makes the most money from monthly fees on a meter and not so much from the actual use. 

 

The economics of the power business used to baffle me.  For 30+ years, we have heard the message from the power companies of “reduce the use.”  It initially seems odd that an electrical utility company would spend money to help us all reduce our use…offering CFLs to school kids, low-flow shower heads, etc. for free.  It didn’t make any sense.

 

I attended a brownfield redevelopment conference in 1996, sponsored by MichCon.  Their sales/marketing person (I think her name was Kelly Fenally) gave me a good answer.  She explained to me that since a power plant has a limited capacity, it is far more profitable to run one power plant and service as many individual users as possible from that plant than it would be to build a second plant and be able to service more customers.  In other words, power companies LOVE lots of meters

 

Think of it this way.  If you have a coal-fired power plant to generate electricity and service 100,000 homes with it, you might charge 10 to 15 cents per kilowatt/hour for the use.  Then you charge about $8/month for the meter itself.  Even if the customer shuts off the main breaker and uses no electricity, you still make $8 per month.  So, the more meters you can hang, the more money you make.

 

If the power company can hang 200,000 meters instead of 100,000 with the same total electrical use, they won’t sell any additional electrical use.  But they can charge a per-meter rate that substantially ups their profit.  In the eyes of a power company, more meters/more users = more profit.

 

Think about it on the small scale.  If you have a house and grow mmj and have one meter, you pay about $8 per month minimum plus your use.  If you decide to hang a meter on the barn and move your grow there, you get hit with another monthly per/meter fee.  Same use of juice, but two meters = more money to the utility company.

So that’s what this comes down to.  CE/CMS/DTE all want to hang as many meters as possible, because that’s their profit center.

that makes sense, i never thought of it that way, but i still think the smarts are too intuitive .... :)

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that could be true bro, but every couple months i get the standard , your using 4000% more electric than your neighbors with a similar home,, call us if we can come and recommend to help you save costs and do an inspection of your meter for errors.  I have in the past called and told them that I had aquariums , lots of them, 100+ .. after i explained they quit sending me letters... anyway in my paranoid mind,, , thats sniffin around...

Are you talking about your energy alert updates ?

 

I get an envelope every month that shows my usage vs my neighbors I use 6 times more than them all lol if they indeed come looking I'm ready for them weights under the limits and plant counts at bare minimum let them knock.

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Are you talking about your energy alert updates ?

 

I get an envelope every month that shows my usage vs my neighbors I use 6 times more than them all lol if they indeed come looking I'm ready for them weights under the limits and plant counts at bare minimum let them knock.

See, I am also but I dont think that for minute that will protect me, the wife, or the dog, apparently we all get them(notices) time to time, just cause everyone is out to get me doesn't mean I'm paranoid.. :)

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I only made a reference that i would consider it trespassing if they come on my property to do anything with my present meter and i would act accordingly.  10 minutes later i missed the call from the security division about concerns over there workers safety.  what a mess should of should been a government mule and comply.

I don't think it's trespassing. Most real estate has utility easements on the title deed. That means they can come onto your property anytime they want. That's why they can come onto your property and trim branches that interfere with the easement without asking you.

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