WHO LET THAT FOX IN THE HEN HOUSE, ANYWAY?

Hey gang, good to see ya’all again! Hope life has been treating you right and that the weather wherever you are is perfect for you! It’s starting to get hot here, which doesn’t thrill me, but the good news is that I now have the right tools to better deal with it this summer. Which brings up the topic of this blog.

Okay, so I had a brand spanking new AC unit installed last week, along with a Wi-Fi enabled programmable thermostat.

Gimme a YeeHaw!

Those of you who know me will be proud to hear that I can actually log into my computer and program/reprogram that shiny new thermostat...which I have been doing like a crazy woman! Cool on…cool off…cool on…cool off…cool more…cool less…all day, every day. LOL

Anyway, APS is the local utility company to which I am enslaved.  I always say that I work simply to pay my air conditioning bill because I HATE to be hot…and in the summer, that bill is second only to my house payment.  Even my F-150 costs me less per month than my summer utility bill.

Okay, I know…I live two feet from hell, but that’s another story for another day.  Suffice it to say that my previous bills with my previous 35-year-old unit were astronomical.  So I now have a new unit, along with dreams of higher efficiency…especially if I can get myself to the point where I will stop screwing with the thermostat and just let it work the way it’s supposed to!

So, in an effort to squeeze maximum savings out of this significant size financial hit, I decided to go to the APS site and see if they have a rebate of any kind.  Holy cow!  They do…a $30 rebate for a programmable thermostat. Fabulous! That cuts the cost of my new thermostat by one-third.  Not bad.

But wait...it’s never that easy, is it?

As I worked through the process on the APS site, they asked me to log into my thermostat's webpage from their site. At first, I was a little itchy about whether or not they might try to capture my password and login, but decided if it saved me from providing receipts, I'd give it a whirl and change it later.

So, I hit enter. And the next thing I encountered was a permission box to check that I would give APS control over my thermostat.

HUH? I was certain I must have read it wrong, so I read it again--two more times, in fact.

Yep, that's what it says. In order to sign up for the $30 rebate on my new thermostat, I have to put APS in charge of that new thermostat.

WHAT?!@#$%^&*!  Seriously?

It’s a new thermostat. My thermostat. I want to be the one to play with it. After all, I paid for it. Even if I do take the $30 rebate from APS, I’m still the one who paid for two-thirds of it…and I’m still the one who’s going to have to pay the utility bill.  Why should they have control of my thermostat? Are they going to take over paying my utility bill?

And didn’t your daddy ever warn you about the old adage of putting the fox in charge of the henhouse?  Well, mine did! And this smacks of some serious chicken doo-doo. This is like putting Amazon in charge of deciding how many boxes of cereal they should ship me every month. It’s like putting Exxon in charge of deciding how much gasoline I should use every month.  Or putting the government in charge of just taking however much money they want in taxes straight from my paycheck each month.  Oh, wait…we already do that...and that works out really well.

Seriously?

For $30, I’m going to sign on to give APS control over my thermostat? Put them in charge of deciding when and how much electricity I should use and, therefore, how much their bill to me should be? This would be handing over the keys to the kingdom for my 2^nd highest bill. And why would I do that? Because they have proven that they always have my best interest at heart? Because history has shown they want to help me spend as little money with them as possible?

I think not. In fact, I’ve been lobbying to get them to send me out a jar of Vaseline with every utility bill. It’s the least they can do. And now I should just give them my login credentials and put them in charge of my personal comfort—and finances?

Well, the end to the story is that I backed out of their little process, told them they could kiss me where the sun doesn't shine, and changed the password on my thermostat control account.

Seriously? Who thunk up that process?  And while we’re at it…who are the bozos at the Corporation Commission that approved that little piece of regulated business? Voting will go a lot differently in my voting booth next time one of them is up for reelection!

That’s my story, brazen and bonkers, and I’m stickin’ to it.  Hang on tight now, ‘cuz we’re gonna go real, real fast!

Love ya, 

Kayce

(Who’s happy as a pig in crap playing with her new thermostat!)