North American Power???

[Paths of the Sea]

Anybody got any insight on this outfit:

http://napower.biz/125518/opportunity/video?vid=1

Sincerely,
Maury Enthusiast!

[Gregg]

That is legit, they are a power company that provides an alternative to the legacy monopoly power providers. The rates are a bit less but not much, I use one of them and save about $10 a month if that in Cincinnati and quite a bit less in Gettysburg.

[Paths of the Sea]

Gregg,

You mean legit sorta like Amway is a legitimate soap company?

That is, North American Power is a company that sells you energy but it is marketed through an MLM system of "salesmen"; I sign you up and then I get a percentage of your utility bill.

Sincerely,
Maury Enthusiast!

[Paths of the Sea]

I guess I am not alone in my skepticism.

I ran across this:

http://ceoln.wordpress.com/2012/10/16/n ... wer-scams/

Sincerely,
Maury Enthusiast!

[JamesVincent]

There are several of them out there that do the same basic thing. I've run across a few. Even if they are a MLM they still actually provide a usable service, unlike most MLMs.

[Burnaby49]

We had what seems like the same thing for natural gas for a while in British Columbia. Fortis, our natural gas utility, sells retail but it is at heart a pipeline company bringing it in from Alberta and northern BC. In the past Fortis has had a monopoly on retail natural gas sales but it doesn't have monopolistic pricing power because it is a regulated utility with prices controlled by the utility board. Fortis's monopoly on the retail sale of gas ended with a change in legislation and all kinds of third party providers cropped up trying to sell gas on fixed-rate long-term contracts. Fortis actually didn't care because these providers have to buy from Fortis at the same regulated price as everyone else, Fortis makes its money from the pipeline delivery. So logically there is no advantage to consumers in having a third party provider since the providers take a big cut for their services on top of the alternate price from Fortis. So why did they flourish for a while? Hard pressure door-to-door and boiler-room phone tactics. For a while they were ubiquitious, banging on my door all the time trying to flog their horror stories about how increases in gas prices were going to make oil look cheap but they'd protect me from it with their bullshit contracts. A lot of gullible people signed on. Results below.


http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Pr ... story.html

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Re ... story.html

[Gregg]

Well, I didn't know it was an MLM, so this exact company I cannot speak to. Like I said, I do use one of them myself. In Ohio, law requires that the "legacy" companies put on their bill a statement of what the alternative providers rate needs to be in order to save the customer money. That's kind of needed, because of how complicated they make their bills. Duke, our delivery company, chages a rate per Kw for electric, a fee per Kw for delivery, a generation sub-fee that is some Ohio mandated thing to recover some or another cost of something, blah blah blah.....

Still, for a lot of people, it's hard to get them to change to a company they've never heard of and abandon the one they've had since WWII or so, especially when a customer doesn't understand that they don't have to run new wires or meters and stuff (more people than you think believe that). Giving them a gift card might get them to try it, as well as using a MLM sales model where you're doing it to help a frreind or family member make a few bucks. (which is a long difference from someone trying to make a living selling the plan)