Is this legal?

[dsirkle]

Thanks for the background there, Dale. I do understand how, especially in Toledo, good customers end up paying for the dregs of society that rip off the utilities on a regular basis. I've been told, quite casually how easy it is for instance to run your cable tv illegally here in Toledo. Drives me nuts! This is why cable tv is so expensive here for those of us that don't like to steal things.

Unfortunately for me, my first experience with the local gas company was so extremely bad that I'll never want to do business with them again unless forced to. Any company that would leave a family with children with no heat or hot water, when it was abundantly clear we had NOT caused the meter damage (hell we had just moved from northern Michigan) is not a company that I want to deal with. In our case, I went up the chain well above the call taker and got the same "we don't care" attitude. I think it comes from them being the only game in town and knowing you have no choice but to deal with them.

These days bean counters at the top set the policies based strictly on profit and loss and customer service no longer is a high priority. Many good customers are treated badly and left with a bad taste in their mouth. Many of the mid to lower management take the attitude that the customers need to be showed who is in control. Computers that are in vehicles make it easy for lazy employees to get out of work by not doing anything and just executing the work on the screen such as "meter tampered with. Need further investigation before completing on order" and then hanging a card on the door to prove that they were there and sneak away without knocking. Policemen, Utility Companies and many others have these computers in their vehicles. Once you learn the system it is easy to work the computer and show good productivity while doing nothing all day. If you are ever at a restaurant and see a guy repeatedly going out to his vehicle and coming back inside,this is what he is doing.He's not showing himself as being at lunch.