Today, I received this email from Eversource:
Let’s ignore, for the moment, the fact that the link underneath the “Save Now” button in the email is invalid, such that I had to actually view the source code for the email, copy the URL, and paste it into my browser’s URL bar manually in order to actually use it.
Let’s ignore, for the moment, the fact that when I visited the link and logged in, the login process didn’t redirect me to the relevant page after I finished logging in. I had to log in and then copy the URL into my browser’s URL bar a second time to actually get to the page.
Those are both time-wasting, annoying idiocy, but the real time-wasting, annoying idiocy is what I found when I finally reached their energy saving application:
Do you see it there? Do you see the tiny, small print at the bottom? It says, “Estimates are based on your billed usage, your profile answers for other fuel usage, and similar homes in your area.”
In other words, “The graph we are displaying here is completely, entirely bogus, and we actually have no fucking idea what is consuming electricity in your house.”
For them to have any actual clue about our electricity consumption, I would have to fill out my “profile” on the site, which is 34 questions long and contains questions like this:
What’s wrong with this question? First of all, it’s impossible for them to accurately estimate the electricity consumed by lighting without a better idea of how many lightbulbs there are than the three choices there, and second, it’s impossible for them to accurately estimate the electricity consumed by lighting without knowing the type of lightbulbs installed in a house. Incandescent, LED, CFL, halogen, and different lightbulb sizes all have dramatically different energy consumption profiles.
Other questions are just as inadequate. For example, the profile asks, “Do you have a dehumidifier?” It doesn’t ask how many dehumidifier’s you run, or how often you run them, or for that matter whether you’re running them right now or not at this time of year.
The data they collect is entirely inadequate, which means that the energy usage profile displayed by this application is entirely inaccurate and useless.
I don’t know who thought this was a good idea, but whoever they are, they are idiots.
Go home, Eversource, you’re drunk.
