Letter to the Editor: Renewable Energy & the Hard Sell

My husband and I read with interest the letter in the August Shuttle from Marion and Dave Brown and their contact with Weavers Way member Meenal Raval.

We had a troubling experience with an Inspire seller at the Philadelphia Folk Festival this summer that left a sour taste and frustration with how Pennsylvania Powerswitch continues to roll out in the state. 

We want to support renewables, and that means NO nukes, either.

But we had a poor experience in the past with Green Mountain, where we got into a very expensive 12-month contract only to find out they are owned by NRG!

So I guess we were ripe for the spiel by the two Inspire sellers, a young new-hire "girl," as she called herself, and her boss. Her double-talk and our initial curiosity had us giving far more ID info than we usually do. When we realized we were being roped in step-by-step and decided we weren't committing, our data had already been submitted electronically. 

"Oops ! It must have timed out," she said. And the spiel continued about how Inspire doesn't charge cancellation fees like all the others, yadda, yadda, yadda. 

By that point we were ticked. We were adamant we did not want to be enrolled. All we got were reassurances but no documentation of that, as, of course, everything is soooo frictionless — it's in the ether! 

Anyway, thanks for printing the letter from Marion and Dave Brown. We will be looking into EcoChoice 100 in our search for renewables. 

— Chrys Brown (no relation)