Salespeople come to people’s houses, let them know they have the right to choose a power provider, and ask if they’re interested in switching. In states with deregulated energy markets, power providers sometimes market their products door-to-door. Unfortunately, in the process, it also gave rise to a new type of scam: fake energy sales. The goal of deregulation was to create more competition for consumers, helping them lower their bills. There are also 27 states where natural gas users can choose their gas provider. In these states, consumers who decide to switch have two different power companies: a power provider that produces the electricity they buy and a power utility that maintains the grid.
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So far, 17 states and the District of Columbia have chosen to deregulate. Instead, several companies would compete to supply electricity to them. If a state chose to deregulate, consumers in that state would no longer have to buy their electricity from their local utility company. Door-to-Door Sales Scamsīack in the 1990s, Congress gave states the option to deregulate their energy markets. Here are seven common utility company scams to watch out for. For $79 (or just $1.52 per week), join more than 1 million members and don't miss their upcoming stock picks. Motley Fool Stock Advisor recommendations have an average return of 618%. But in every case, what the scammers really want is to line their own pockets at your expense. Sometimes, scammers woo you with the promise of lower bills or better equipment, and sometimes they threaten you with having your service cut off. Some of them involve people coming to your door, as they did at my house others are usually carried out by phone or email. This is only one of several scams related to your home utilities - particularly your electric service. It was just a scam to trick me into switching power providers.
![drive utility called drivedx drive utility called drivedx](https://images.idgesg.net/images/article/2019/04/drivedx-main-screen-100795159-large.jpg)
![drive utility called drivedx drive utility called drivedx](https://www.sir-apfelot.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/drivedx-free-space-monitoring.jpg)
Why would I do that? Because I happened to know their story wasn’t true. But instead of running to fetch my latest bill, I slammed the door in their faces. It sounded pretty serious, like something any customer who cared about lowering their utility bills would want to fix right away - which is probably exactly what those folks at the door were counting on. If it did, that would mean I was being “double-charged” on every single bill.
DRIVE UTILITY CALLED DRIVEDX CODE
They said they were from “the power company” and they were there because they’d been “getting calls from all neighbors about why their bills are so high.” They then asked to look at my utility bill so they could see if it had a particular code at the top. A few years ago, a couple of young people came to my door dressed in a uniform I couldn’t identify.