One of the main questions we're asked is this one. How can a person know their utility company is not overcharging them? A lot depends on their servicing utility company and how complicated their set of rules are. Let's face it, many utility companies have an army of lawyers and they're very very good at writing rules and tariffs that would have Enstein shaking his head. (Or at least arriving at a new theory for understanding the universe.)

Usually your larger for-profit utility companies have the money and the staff to devise a lot of complicated rules. Just go to your servicing utility company's website and look at the actual tariffs. Read through a couple of pages and figure out what they're saying. If it doesn't make sense, it's not supposed to be.

The more complex the rules, the more opportunity for the utility company to overcharge you. The people who answer the phone are not attorneys.

Typically for smaller municipal managed utilities, there are fewer tariffs and fewer rules. When things are more straight-forward, there are usually fewer mistakes. You still might be paying a tremendous amount, but there's often a greater likelihood your bills are correct.

In future blogs we'll continue to talk about this subject and how it affects you. One thing we'd be interested in is if you could let us know if you feel you are being overcharged by your utility company. Please reply to this blog and any comments you have. You can even add the name of your utility company. This can be for gas, electricity, water and sewage. When we last looked at this about 2/3'rds of people felt they're paying too much.

We'll put the results of the poll on this site for you to see. Thank you.