The banner headline on this week’s Business page trumpeted the start of NYSEG’s annual “Voice Your Choice” program, designed to allow the utility’s customers to choose among three electricity pricing plans for 2008.
According to what I’ve read, there’s the Fixed Price Option, the Default Supply Option and the ESCO Price Option. The safest bet appears to be the former, as it minimizes the risk of facing increased energy costs, especially over the summer months.
But what do I know? The place I rest my head is property of a large rental company in Binghamton, the owner I assume will be voicing my choice for me in this matter. I don’t think I have any choice when it comes to NYSEG; as far as I know, my selections are:
1. Pay the NYSEG bill, or
2. Live by candlelight.
In fact, the only electricity choice I get to voice is to my two apartment-mates: “Hey, turn down the damn heat — I’m broke!”
The announcement of Voice Your Choice did, however, get me thinking: What if other utility companies allowed their patrons some sort of choice?
Everyone’s familiar with the multitude of options offered by the local cable television companies in our market, but I’d love the option of “Manly TV” — no Oprah, Rachael Ray or The View clogging up my midday. All my “hard-hitting” local news would be delivered by Chris Berman and Joe Rogan, with Dick Butkus reporting my weather on the 10’s — and Maria Sharapova on sports.
Sappy movies would be available on demand, but would be hidden somewhere on my dial well beyond ESPN 8 (“The Ocho”) — and require several alphanumeric passwords, to be entered only when the girlfriend has arrived, and the bros are long gone.
For many, the monthly water bill is another mundane burden that would benefit from a choice.
Why pipe in just water when customers routinely demand various other liquids? At my place, we’re never short on Poland Spring bottles, but our milk supply is almost always running low.
For health-conscious customers, your kitchen sink could be a never-ending spigot of freshly squeezed orange juice.
Or perhaps one could solve all his late-night needs; wouldn’t it make economic sense for the area’s thousands of college-age residents to simply pipe in their Keystone Light? (Close enough to water, anyway.)
These free-market concepts of supply and demand could also be re-applied to telephone service in the Southern Tier. Who wants to dial a seven-digit phone number in today’s world of perpetual cellular hyperactivity? The invisible hand no longer has time to dial area codes.
So why not let customers voice their numerical choice? If I absolutely need to be immediately accessible to all my friends and family, I can buy the new “Ultra Premium” telephone plan: a one-digit number.
That’s right. You need to reach Chris Strub? Just dial four.
Of course, scarcity would leave the nine remaining digits — some guy named ‘Operator’ already called dibs on 0 — wildly expensive, but the market will determine the cost of these coveted numbers.
Just imagine the ease of formulating pick-up lines at the local pub: “My number, baby, is six ... what’s yours?”
Strub is a senior at Binghamton University and a part-time copy editor at the Press & Sun-Bulletin. His column normally appears on Thursdays.
cstrub@pressconnects.com
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