Neither Rain Nor Snow Nor Heat Nor Gloom of Night...

When you’re in the energy business, you spend a lot of time watching the weather. In the middle of winter the weather channel is as much an obsession as ESPN is to a die-hard football fan. Give me a tropical storm forming off the coast of Africa and my heart races like a high school student before the senior prom. Balmy weather in the middle of January? Spring-like days in July? Bah, humbug! I’ll sit inside and mope, thank you very much.

But weather is supposed to provide entertainment, not inconvenience. When the power to our building in Stamford was cut off a couple years ago because hot temperatures melted the underground pipes carrying the power lines, I was annoyed. And when I heard that our Maryland Customer Call Center lost power today because of severe thunderstorms, I thought: “This is going entirely too far.”

Our call center representatives take as many as 70 calls a day each and they pride themselves on two statistics: First, the number of calls picked up within two minutes (86% last month) , and second, the number of customer issues resolved on the first call (92%). They are the unsung heroes of MXenergy, working tirelessly every day to explain our price protection plans, to answer questions about monthly bills, to resolve occasional complaints (yes, we have a few).

Our call center ambassadors are the face of MXenergy, our spokesmen, our good will ambassadors. Not only must they be computer literate and able to access customer information and input data quickly and accurately. They must also be familiar with the enrollment details of 36 different utilities throughout the country. After all, we serve customers in more states and utility territories than any other retail energy marketer in the world. Often they are called upon to make lightening quick judgments. The next phone call could come from Vancouver, British Columbia or from Athens, Georgia. A customer could be calling from a small town in the Texas panhandle or from an apartment on Third Avenue in New York City.

Not all of the calls are pleasant chit-chats. Fortunately, most customers are calling to enroll or to understand their woefully complicated energy bills. But then there are other calls: Energy prices are high and I’m having trouble paying my bills. (We’ll try to work out a payment plan.) Why are my gas bills higher if I’ve lowered my thermostat and have a fixed rate? (Probably because it’s colder outside and you’re consuming more energy.) Why is my renewal rate for electricity supply higher? (Because wholesale electricity costs have risen over 70% since last year.) Customers rarely call to tell us what a great job we’re doing in keeping energy prices low.

But through it all our reps always smile! That’s right, they smile – through the phone! Try calling them some time and you’ll be amazed. You can see them smile because they’re so doggone friendly, even when you call to complain. It’s positively disarming!

So when I learned that the thunderstorm had closed down our call center I was concerned. Not because we might lose some calls. I knew that our customers would not know the difference, because phone calls to our call center would be automatically diverted to another center in Florida. No, I was concerned about our customer reps. What would they do? How would they spend the rest of the day? How would they cope with the deafening silence? Would they suffer withdrawal symptoms like a smoker that goes cold turkey? Would they sit in the stormy darkness, watching the lightening bolts and counting the seconds to the thunderclap?

I imagined them at their stations, ear phones on, fingers poised over the keyboard, eyes fixed on their blank screens, ready to spring into action as soon as the phone lines opened up. The clocks would have stopped and everything would be in a state of suspended animation.

Or maybe they all pushed back from their desks and took a simultaneous break for the first time ever. After all, they can never all be away from their desks at the same time, since somebody is always calling. Now they could stand up, meet each other in the middle of the office (smiling of course), break out a bottle of champagne. Somebody tunes into 98Rock in Baltimore and they start to dance.

Then a couple hours later the skies brighten, the rain stops, and suddenly the hum of the computers and the purr of the telephones returns. Slowly, the life of the call center returns to normal. The calm, steady, smiling voices return. “Thank you for picking me up so quickly. My utility bills are getting out of control. Do you think you could help me budget my energy costs?” “No problem…”

Herodotus, the Athenian historian, wrote something that was translated and inscribed in the pediment of the New York Post Office: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night can stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”

I hope the ancient Greeks will forgive me if I add a little coda: “And neither shall thunderstorms or tempests prevent our customers from getting through to their customer reps when they need them!”

What, Me Worry?

As a kid I was a fan of Mad Magazine. I enjoyed the antics of its smiling, freckly, gap-toothed cover boy, Alfred E. Newman. Alfred E. Newman had the perpetual look of a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar -- or should I say with his hand stuck in the cookie jar, as if he was simultaneously afraid of being caught and humored by his predicament. It was a look of bewildered puzzlement. “What, Me Worry?” was his constant refrain. “Sure my hand is stuck and I’m in pain,” he seemed to say. “But this is so absurd I have to laugh.”

As an adult I tried unsuccessfully to turn my kids onto Mad. Alfred E. Newman was still there – he hadn’t aged a week in thirty years. But cookie jars were out of fashion and if it isn’t on a screen it doesn’t count. Alfred would be shocked to find himself lost to the ages in the company of goody two-shoes like Little Lord Fauntleroy.

I was reminded of Alfred E. Newman as I stood in line filling up my gas tank recently. I had to take a picture of the result: 18 gallons cost $77.38 at $4.299/gallon.


Why, not too long ago you could have flown from New York to Fort Lauderdale on Jet Blue for $75! I looked across the island at a young man who was filling up a Honda, probably his first car. He had freckles and was smiling; there was a gap in his front teeth and … could it be? He had this look, as if to say: “What, Me Worry?” In other words: “These prices are so absurd, I’m not sure whether to laugh or to cry, so I might as well laugh.”

Practically every night these days there is a news story that the AAA reports the average price of gasoline hit a new high. Of course, if the average nationwide is $3.60 we can be sure the price in Connecticut will be $4.40; our taxes are among the highest in the country. Now, look closely at the news reporters and you will see that same expression of puzzlement. “Hey, we aren’t making this stuff up. Really: Just go out and look for yourself. It’s unbelievable…”

Let’s face it. We really are faced with a new world. For over a century since the first oil find in Titusville, PA, energy costs were relatively low in the United States compared to other parts of the world. We were blessed with local production and with competitive markets that held down the price of refined products. But over the past few decades declining domestic production, environmental restrictions on new refinery capacity, and increased demand from abroad have shifted the supply and demand balance. As more of the world enjoys the benefits of economic prosperity, we find ourselves in line with everybody else for the globe’s limited energy supplies.

As prices rise to previously inconceivable levels, we feel bewildered and puzzled. Other countries have faced these pressures for years, and have reacted with smaller cars and lower consumption. We know what needs to be done – e.g., conservation, fuel efficiency, alternative energy supplies, new nuclear power plants – but we also know that these are long term solutions. We have been lulled to sleep in a fool’s paradise of low energy prices and suddenly we are waking up to a new economic reality. The situation is so absurd that we don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Absurd or not, we do need to get serious about energy policy. Alfred E. Newman may not have grown up but the rest of us have no excuse. The adults in our nation’s capital need to wake up to the new economic reality. One would hope in a presidential election year there would be serious debate about energy policy. Instead, most of the talk is political posturing about gasoline prices. It is not Exxon’s fault that gasoline prices are high. That company is simply selling its product at the market. If they gave it away their shareholders – people like you and me – would be outraged. We can’t deny the hard working people of the developing world the opportunity to improve their lives.

But we can help introduce competition through alternative energy supplies. We can lower demand by improving the efficiency of our energy guzzling economy. We can expedite inexpensive – and safe – nuclear power plants.

“What, Me Worry?” You betchya. No more cookies for you, Alfred. Time to grow up and get to work!

A Tale of Two Neighbors

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of new technology, it was the age of high energy bills, it was the epoch of enlightenment, it was the epoch of political posturing, it was the spring of environmental consciousness, it was the winter of global warming.

So might begin a modern day version of Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities. But today I had a delightful conversation with one of our customers in Georgia and I may need to write a different book: A Tale of Two Neighbors.

My novel – I would say “true story” but Oprah Winfrey would get upset that I am changing some of the details – begins on a pleasant suburban street where two neighbors, both customers of MXenergy, are having a conversation over the border of bright red peonies that have blossomed between their two yards.

The first customer --- Mrs. Adams, I’ll call her – shares with her neighbor – Mr. Morgan – the good news that she has just received an offer from MXenergy to “blend and extend” her fixed price contract for another year. The new rate is slightly higher than Mrs. Adams old rate but it is substantially lower than the current rates that MXenergy is offering new customers. What MXenergy has done, Mrs. Adams explains, is “blend” her old rate into the new rates and “extend” the term of the contract for another year.

Mr. Morgan is delighted at Mrs. Adams’good fortune. But at the same time he is puzzled. Mr. Morgan, you see, has also been a loyal customer of MXenergy. But he did not get this offer. In fact, when he returns home and pulls out his latest bill he finds that his price is substantially higher than Mrs. Adams’ new rate.

Mr. Morgan calls MXenergy and inquires why. Unfortunately, a new customer service representative loses his call. Understandably annoyed, but still amazingly patient, he complains to his elected officials and sends a note to MXenergy expressing his disappointment.

One day, as I am passing the water cooler – literally – I hear about Mr. Morgan and his tale of frustration. I think to myself: If the politicians in Washington can’t understand energy prices, how can I expect Mr. Morgan to figure them out? So I decided to call Mr. Morgan and talk to him.

Mrs. Morgan answered the phone and soon I am having the most pleasant conversation with both Mr. and Mrs. Morgan. First, I express gratitude for their loyalty all these years. I explained to them that MXenergy as well as Shell Energy Services, a company that merged into MXenergy in 2006, had set out in 1999 to help customers like the Morgans protect themselves from higher energy prices. We did this by offering customers a fixed rate for 1-3 years, similar to a fixed rate mortgage.

But then I had to deliver the bad news: We cannot offer them the rates we offered Mrs. Adams. You see, it appeared that when the Adams’ and the Morgans’ first enrolled with MXenergy, both families opted for fixed price protection. Their timing was excellent, as prices started to rise in 2000 and with the exception of a dip in late 2001 and early 2002 they haven’t looked back since. Both had the benefit of fixed price protection for the first couple years.

But then in 2004, when the Adams family renewed its fixed price protection plan, the Morgans decided to switch to a variable price plan. This may have worked out for the Morgans in 2006 and 2007, when energy prices dropped temporarily. But by late 2007, prices started to go up again. By late spring of 2008, natural gas prices were 89% higher than a year earlier. When we at MXenergy saw the higher prices, we decided to offer our fixed price customers – including the Adams – a chance to switch onto a longer term price that would “blend” their old rates with the current higher rates. By doing this we could offer a lower price than the market.

Unfortunately, for variable price customers like the Morgans, we had nothing to blend. We could only offer current prices which of course are much higher.

The Morgans took the news with grace and good humor. Mr. Morgan had retired some time ago but he was clearly a sophisticated businessman. He and his wife immediately grasped the risk that they had taken – and for a time had benefited from – when they opted for variable prices.

“Can we sign up for your fixed price now?” Mrs. Morgan asked.

“Of course,” I said. Fortunately we had a senior rate that I could offer which was substantially below our current rate for other new customers. I promised the Morgans a customer service representative would call them soon to confirm their decision.

I don’t think Mr. and Mrs. Morgan would necessarily quote Sidney Carton at the end of Tale of Two Cities: “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done.” But I hope they are happy with their fixed rate plan: long term fixed price protection.

Of course, we don’t guarantee that prices will go up or that fixed prices will be necessary. But fixed prices are like insurance: better to be safe than sorry.

The End.