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Just got charged for reading it

Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Lemmy Shitpost
lemmyshitpost
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  • L [email protected]

    I always thought BT should get into the property market. They could sell a house, then rent that house to its new owner, then charge them a fee for using each room.

    G This user is from outside of this forum
    G This user is from outside of this forum
    [email protected]
    wrote on last edited by
    #28

    I would be the shithead that would rotate from room to room daily just to fuck their billing up.

    company I worked for had a customer that did this with virtual machines. every single week they would request their VMs from last week to be decommissioned and new ones to be built in their place. not bad if there's only five or six. they had this done to over 300 VMs. we accepted for two years, the length of the contract and then promptly dropped them, hard.

    the collective backlash caused the company to go bankrupt. they attempted to sue but our lawyers had already created enough documentation to prove we had successfully executed the contract the best of our abilities and had decided to not renew based on high operational costs attributed to the high maintenance requirement of their account and recommended they seek help from a larger competitive service.

    the chaos they put operations through was horrible but was only part of the hell they unleashed. we had to dedicate a billing representative to their account because they contested every-single-fucking-bill. these calls would drag on for weeks before ending with them agreeing to pay what we were charging them, just before starting up for the next billing cycle.

    point is, just because you're locked in contract doesn't mean they're in control.

    P A 2 Replies Last reply
    0
    • S [email protected]

      If fees are independent or partially independent of consumption, i would consider jumping to all electric.

      S This user is from outside of this forum
      S This user is from outside of this forum
      [email protected]
      wrote on last edited by
      #29

      That’s the plan for the future. It’s easy to switch to induction for cooking. The bigger and more expensive switch are the A/C and water heater, which I need to assess (and budget) for.

      1 Reply Last reply
      1
      • G [email protected]

        I would be the shithead that would rotate from room to room daily just to fuck their billing up.

        company I worked for had a customer that did this with virtual machines. every single week they would request their VMs from last week to be decommissioned and new ones to be built in their place. not bad if there's only five or six. they had this done to over 300 VMs. we accepted for two years, the length of the contract and then promptly dropped them, hard.

        the collective backlash caused the company to go bankrupt. they attempted to sue but our lawyers had already created enough documentation to prove we had successfully executed the contract the best of our abilities and had decided to not renew based on high operational costs attributed to the high maintenance requirement of their account and recommended they seek help from a larger competitive service.

        the chaos they put operations through was horrible but was only part of the hell they unleashed. we had to dedicate a billing representative to their account because they contested every-single-fucking-bill. these calls would drag on for weeks before ending with them agreeing to pay what we were charging them, just before starting up for the next billing cycle.

        point is, just because you're locked in contract doesn't mean they're in control.

        P This user is from outside of this forum
        P This user is from outside of this forum
        [email protected]
        wrote on last edited by
        #30

        So I'm trying to wrap my head around why they would do this and how that even worked. They would decommission them on Friday and have them rebuilt on Monday? These didn't have a specific config then I assume? And they did it because they paid per hour the machine existed so it made sense cost wise?

        G 1 Reply Last reply
        1
        • snokenkeekaguard@lemmy.dbzer0.comS [email protected]
          This post did not contain any content.
          I This user is from outside of this forum
          I This user is from outside of this forum
          [email protected]
          wrote on last edited by
          #31

          My condo building just got rid of the company that meters our water. After years of this we could finally break the contract.

          My water bill usage was something like $15/mo and they had an admin fee of $13/mo. In a building of like 150 apartments, those guys were raking in like $2k a month from us for keeping their automated shit plugged in.

          The managers said they would just stop metering and our monthly fees would pay the bill. After a year, they would adjust our monthly rates to balance it out.

          They never had to balance it out - that’s how little the overall water usage cost was.

          1 Reply Last reply
          4
          • L [email protected]

            You're allowed to buy electricity from a separate broker than your "power company"

            I'm curious about this, would you be willing to elaborate?

            Where I live we don't have a choice of electricity providers for my home. Are you talking about states that have deregulated energy markets?

            prioritymotif@lemmy.worldP This user is from outside of this forum
            prioritymotif@lemmy.worldP This user is from outside of this forum
            [email protected]
            wrote on last edited by
            #32

            Yes, they're called retail electric suppliers. Some have offers to lock in a fixed Price for a year and others have variable rates. Then you can choose to have power billed separately from delivery or not.

            1 Reply Last reply
            0
            • snokenkeekaguard@lemmy.dbzer0.comS [email protected]
              This post did not contain any content.
              drunkanroot@sh.itjust.worksD This user is from outside of this forum
              drunkanroot@sh.itjust.worksD This user is from outside of this forum
              [email protected]
              wrote on last edited by
              #33

              another dollar wont hurt fee ahould be 1.75 cos of taxes

              1 Reply Last reply
              7
              • P [email protected]

                So I'm trying to wrap my head around why they would do this and how that even worked. They would decommission them on Friday and have them rebuilt on Monday? These didn't have a specific config then I assume? And they did it because they paid per hour the machine existed so it made sense cost wise?

                G This user is from outside of this forum
                G This user is from outside of this forum
                [email protected]
                wrote on last edited by
                #34

                it doesn't make sense because it was never supposed to.

                they wanted out of the contract and didn't want to pay the fees. The contract was large enough that we couldn't really take the hit to MRR and wouldn't let them out without the fees. so, they were dicks about it and threatened the CEO with legal action, which is why we forced them into fulfilling the contract to term. they could have left at any time, had they been willing to pay the fees.

                as for the VMs. they were remote consoles used in some financial business. I think they had a VPN from each of their locations that used thin-clients to connect to the VMs somehow. it didn't matter if their user data was gone since they were all based on a single image that had all the software/configs built-in.

                they paid per machine and storage volume. as long as they didn't go over their contracted amount or under a threshold then they were in compliance with the contract. it was a mutually beneficial contract in the sense that they needed HA high volume VMs with low storage requirements at a fixed price. we offered that to them with volumetric licensing for Microsoft software at a competitive price. think of them like virtual workspaces.

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                • S [email protected]

                  If fees are independent or partially independent of consumption, i would consider jumping to all electric.

                  A This user is from outside of this forum
                  A This user is from outside of this forum
                  [email protected]
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #35

                  And then when more than a third of people do that, suddenly the state mandates paying for a connection anyways. (Of course the mandate is completely unrelated to the nice dinners that senators enjoy.)

                  1 Reply Last reply
                  1
                  • G [email protected]

                    I would be the shithead that would rotate from room to room daily just to fuck their billing up.

                    company I worked for had a customer that did this with virtual machines. every single week they would request their VMs from last week to be decommissioned and new ones to be built in their place. not bad if there's only five or six. they had this done to over 300 VMs. we accepted for two years, the length of the contract and then promptly dropped them, hard.

                    the collective backlash caused the company to go bankrupt. they attempted to sue but our lawyers had already created enough documentation to prove we had successfully executed the contract the best of our abilities and had decided to not renew based on high operational costs attributed to the high maintenance requirement of their account and recommended they seek help from a larger competitive service.

                    the chaos they put operations through was horrible but was only part of the hell they unleashed. we had to dedicate a billing representative to their account because they contested every-single-fucking-bill. these calls would drag on for weeks before ending with them agreeing to pay what we were charging them, just before starting up for the next billing cycle.

                    point is, just because you're locked in contract doesn't mean they're in control.

                    A This user is from outside of this forum
                    A This user is from outside of this forum
                    [email protected]
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #36

                    If your company was hosting virtual machines and people staring and stopping them caused you headaches, it just seems to me like the company you worked at was absolute trash lol.

                    G 1 Reply Last reply
                    0
                    • S [email protected]

                      The worst for me is my gas bill. My bill is usually around $50-$60 per month, and when you break it down, the actual gas I use is $3. The rest are fees.

                      S This user is from outside of this forum
                      S This user is from outside of this forum
                      [email protected]
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #37

                      I have converted to a heat pump and induction stove. I legally need auxiliary power to heat my home, so I have to pay 30 dollars a month just for the gas hookup.

                      1 Reply Last reply
                      0
                      • S [email protected]

                        If fees are independent or partially independent of consumption, i would consider jumping to all electric.

                        C This user is from outside of this forum
                        C This user is from outside of this forum
                        [email protected]
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #38

                        I'm in Texas, and our electric provider added a $200/month fee for all accounts for the next 2 decades to pay for the 2021 winter storm. They bought electricity from other providers during the storm for like 1000x the standard rate and passed the cost towards future customers.

                        And the beauty of that is that those fees also impact solar users who aren't even using power, since a certificate of occupancy requires that a house be connected to the grid.

                        1 Reply Last reply
                        3
                        • A [email protected]

                          If your company was hosting virtual machines and people staring and stopping them caused you headaches, it just seems to me like the company you worked at was absolute trash lol.

                          G This user is from outside of this forum
                          G This user is from outside of this forum
                          [email protected]
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #39

                          they weren't just starting and stopping them.

                          they were requesting all 300+ to be decommissioned and then a new ticket to recommission new ones.

                          I mean, what IT company doesn't have their problems? at least the people I worked with didn't have your attitude, so that made it an enriching experience.

                          A 1 Reply Last reply
                          2
                          • G [email protected]

                            they weren't just starting and stopping them.

                            they were requesting all 300+ to be decommissioned and then a new ticket to recommission new ones.

                            I mean, what IT company doesn't have their problems? at least the people I worked with didn't have your attitude, so that made it an enriching experience.

                            A This user is from outside of this forum
                            A This user is from outside of this forum
                            [email protected]
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #40

                            What the fuck kind of hosting company requires a request ticket to provision and tear down a virtual machine!?!? That’s, like, the whole point of virtualization.

                            1 Reply Last reply
                            0
                            • snokenkeekaguard@lemmy.dbzer0.comS [email protected]
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                              wrote on last edited by
                              #41

                              The fees are bad... but the amount of bullshit they can make you jump through to hook solar up to your place is bullshit of an entirely different fragrance. They can take up to a month to approve or deny the plan, suggest revisions, and then take another month, up to 90 days worth. Then they have ANOTHER 90 days after the fact to "inspect and approve" or "suggest revisions" to the installation. It's a god damned Columbian goat screw

                              1 Reply Last reply
                              5
                              • snokenkeekaguard@lemmy.dbzer0.comS [email protected]
                                This post did not contain any content.
                                S This user is from outside of this forum
                                S This user is from outside of this forum
                                [email protected]
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #42

                                It drives me nuts that my state has "deregulated" natural gas. All natural gas in the region is supplied to every home by a single company (the same one as before deregulation). I pay at least $35 a month all year just for the privilege of being connected to it.

                                BUT, I don't actually do business with that company. I get to pick from a dozen companies that all provide front-end billing for my natural gas. They advertise how much they will charge per therm used (plus an admin fee), but that price is on top of what I pay to the company actually providing gas. If I have an issue with the gas, the supplier comes out to deal with it, not the company I pay every month. And, I have to change companies every 6-24 months to maintain the advertised rates, otherwise they increase my cost after the new customer price expires. Its fake competition that added an extra step to the process and increases prices compared to the regulated version that used to exist.

                                1 Reply Last reply
                                11
                                • N [email protected]

                                  Australia checking in. We have the price per Kw, and the number of Kw consumed.

                                  T This user is from outside of this forum
                                  T This user is from outside of this forum
                                  [email protected]
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #43

                                  Stage one.
                                  Stage two.
                                  Service fees.
                                  Other.
                                  (E)

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                                  0
                                  • snokenkeekaguard@lemmy.dbzer0.comS [email protected]
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                                    H This user is from outside of this forum
                                    H This user is from outside of this forum
                                    [email protected]
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #44

                                    No billing fee?

                                    1 Reply Last reply
                                    1
                                    • R [email protected]

                                      Is this some USA joke I'm too European to understand?

                                      misterfrog@lemmy.worldM This user is from outside of this forum
                                      misterfrog@lemmy.worldM This user is from outside of this forum
                                      [email protected]
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #45

                                      Your country had better have a state owned grid, with a state run retailer, else this is still the same sort of shit, just without hidden fees.

                                      Sincerely, an annoyed Victorian/Australian that wishes their electricity was just managed by the state.

                                      There may be no hidden fees where I'm from, but when there's a private company with a monopoly, what's the difference?

                                      Capitalism/privatisation is such a scam

                                      😞

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                                      0
                                      • R [email protected]

                                        Is this some USA joke I'm too European to understand?

                                        T This user is from outside of this forum
                                        T This user is from outside of this forum
                                        [email protected]
                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #46

                                        My bill in Illinois isn't like this. There's a couple fees to stay hooked into the grid and then a flat rate per unit energy

                                        Variable rate would be nicer but I'm too busy to set it up

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                                        0
                                        • R [email protected]

                                          What, you don't have that? My electric bill has a rate, a rate for the network, a subscription fee, electricity green taxes, and sales tax. I'm European.

                                          calavera@lemm.eeC This user is from outside of this forum
                                          calavera@lemm.eeC This user is from outside of this forum
                                          [email protected]
                                          wrote on last edited by [email protected]
                                          #47

                                          Nothing beats Portugal:

                                          • Kwh rate
                                          • Social electricity finance tax
                                          • General economic costs fee
                                          • Infrastructure utilization fee
                                          • Energy and geology exploration tax
                                          • Electricity consumption Special tax
                                          • Audiovisual contribution
                                          • Sales tax
                                          R 1 Reply Last reply
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