Every year, there are thousands and thousands of cases – ranging from modest to the extreme when it comes to utility overcharges.
At times, these become public – such as the controversy in North Carolina regarding the utility company’s ability to charge customers at a high tax rate that no longer exists.
Most often, however, these kinds of overcharges go completely undetected. It never ceases to amaze us how often people will complain about the costs of their utilities, and never realize just how right they are.
For those who take the next step and call a Utility Auditing Specialist, it is rare not to find at least one error, inappropriate rate, or improper tax classification. With over 150 components to every utility bill, there are at least 150 chances per bill that you are being overcharged – and that’s before checking the meter’s accuracy.
Remember that in companies as large and bureaucratic as utility companies, especially those with no local competition, have about ZERO interest in providing you the best possible service at the best possible price.
That’s where we come in. We have decades of experience navigating the murky depths of Utility Bills. If you think you’re being overcharged, don’t hesitate to call Paul Steberger of Applied Utility Auditors TODAY.
Did you know that utility companies often have more than one rate for commercial/business clients? Guess what? They don’t hand out the best rates automatically. Customers have to seek better rates for themselves. This process can be tedious, and frankly, you’re already busy running your own business. This is where Applied Utility Auditors can help. We find overcharges for 80% of all clients.
You might be reading this because your business was referred to AUA or because we’ve contacted you about conducting a utility audit and you have questions. We’re fortunate that the majority of our customers come from happy client referrals. Here are a few quick points:
First, you’re in good hands. Our team has over 75 years of collective experience in auditing:
• Telecom
• Electric
• Gas
• Water/sewer services
• General bill auditing
Second, our job is to find:
• Errors
• Overcharges
• Incorrect rate group assignments
Third, we get to work by:
• Auditing your invoices
• Analyzing usage
• Identifying the errors
Fourth, you reap the benefits:
• Cost and service recommendations are made
• New rates are negotiated with the utility provider
• Everyone’s favorite part: You score a REFUND!
• We continue monitoring your utility bills monthly basis to ensure accuracy How does it work?
While reading a recent post by Ron Miller at Techcrunch earlier today— I had an opportunity to reflect on just how much more clutter my office used to have. The picture from his blog post says a lot:
This picture, too reminds me of what my own storage closet looked like:
We updated our antivirus software just the other day. Remember when there were giant boxes filled with cd’s, handbooks, pamphlets, etc? All we did was click “download” and use the codes from our receipt to activate the product… More simple than that, the cloud has made it possible to download life-improving software by tapping on the ‘playstore’ or ‘appstore’ icons on our phones.
Software doesn’t have to come in stacks of hard boxes anymore.
If you still have boxes full of programs in your offices, there’s a good chance you could benefit from moving to cloud based services… and there’s no doubt that your cleaning service will benefit too.
Today, the entirety of my office essentials fit inside the laptop bag — and when you consider that I can tap a few buttons on my phone and send a 20 page collated document from the cloud to my local staples, complete with custom specifications… one wonders why people own more than a laptop and a phone.
If you need help moving your business into the cloud, Contact Paul Steberger of Applied Telecom Solutions.
If you suspect that you may be getting overcharged on a utility bill… there are at least 150 chances per bill that you’re right.
Rate Optimization
→ There are numerous rate schedules available for a particular business’s account. These rate schedules also change from time to time. We can determine if a new rate might be advantageous to our clients. There is no legal or tariff rule that obligates the utility to determine what rate is best for you, so it is not uncommon to find oneself with an unsatisfactory rate schedule. The average layperson may find themselves in far over their heads when trying to determine the best rate schedule on their own. With our expertise, we can sort through and find what will work best for each client.
Recovery Audits:
→ Every year millions of dollars are billed to utility clients that are incorrect, and, to a large extent, they are in favor of the utility. Many businesses are surprised to learn that is not the responsibility of the utility to correct errors. You may very well be paying too much for the utilities your company uses.
Don’t give your utility company a bonus. When you’re over your head in overhead, call Paul Steberger of Applied Utility Auditors.
It was 10 nights before Christmas, and all the way down Wall Street the coast was clear. A flatbed truck turned the corner and lurched to a stop in front of the New York Stock Exchange. Arturo Di Modica and his small band of co-conspirators jumped out and quickly got to work. The night watchman had just completed his patrol of 11 Wall St., and, having cased the block for several nights, Mr. Di Modica and his team knew they had just 4½ minutes until he returned. They lowered the bronze statue—all 3½ tons of it—onto the middle of Broad Street, right under the exchange’s Christmas tree. The truck zoomed out of sight, but Mr. Di Modica stood at the corner, watching and waiting for morning. It was 25 years ago that Wall Street’s favorite mascot arrived downtown. Mr. Di Modica, the Italian artist who says he spent $350,000 of his own money to cast “Charging Bull” in his SoHo studio as a Christmas gift to the city, relished the reactions of New Yorkers—traders, tourists, cabdrivers and hot-dog vendors. “It was love right away,” recalled Mr. Di Modica, now 73 years old. “They wanted to touch it, embrace it—it was beautiful. I stood there watching until about noon.” Executives at the New York Stock Exchange weren’t nearly as amused. The police were called in, and when they proved unwilling or ill-equipped to run an 18-foot-long bull out of town, the exchange hired private contractors to haul the beast off to Queens. Mr. Di Modica, who for years plopped his works onto city streets in the middle of the night, should have been used to this sort of thing. But even though his bull seemed menacing—nostrils flared and ready to gore anything in its path—the sculpture, he said, was intended as a symbol of New York’s drive, optimism and willingness to barrel ahead against the odds. The artist conceived “Charging Bull” during the city’s most bearish hour, just days after the stock-market crash on Oct. 19, 1987, known as Black Monday. Mr. Di Modica, a Sicilian immigrant who had found success in New York—enough to buy a Manhattan studio and a Ferrari—remained hopeful for his adopted home at a time many were convinced the city’s best days were behind it. Though the market had recovered much of its losses by 1989, the city was still a crime-ridden shadow of its former self. Then-NYSE President and Chief Operating Officer Richard Grasso couldn’t be reached to corroborate the story, but Mr. Di Modica said the Wall Street leader offered to return the bull to the exchange on one condition: that the artist would make a bear too. Mr. Di Modica said he refused. “The bear means the market goes down, but I wanted to represent the city getting bigger, stronger, faster.” Mr. Grasso, recalled Mr. Di Modica, hung up. Mr. Di Modica paid to bail “Charging Bull” out of Queens, and with the help of community activists and the city’s Parks Department found a new home for him just a few blocks away from the exchange in Bowling Green.
There he has remained for 25 years, through bullish and bearish times alike. He has witnessed the drop in crime, the rise in real-estate prices and the election of a billionaire mayor. He has also stood firm through the dot-com bust, two terrorist attacks—Sept. 11 left him covered in a thick layer of soot—the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression and the Occupy Wall Street protests. Mr. Di Modica has likely recouped the expense of building the bull several times over in the past 25 years, having cast sibling bulls for cities around the world, and having sold many smaller versions to collectors. Whenever the market is down, people stop him in the street and ask, “Why isn’t the bull working?” he said. “I tell them he’s resting, he’s tired, but he’ll get back to it soon.” Corrections & Amplifications Richard Grasso was president and chief operating officer of the New York Stock Exchange 25 years ago. An earlier version of this article incorrectly described him as the NYSE chairman at that time.
Hello this is a post I selected from the internet that should interest educators as well as those that need to communicate with a large audience.
My associates and I are very involved with unified communications, (UC), products that are Microsoft and non-Microsoft, that provide incredibly versatile communications through email, voice and IM.
This is a guest post from Hélène Fyffe, an undergraduate starting her final year at Edinburgh Napier University, having spent a year on placement with Microsoft UK Education as part of her course.
If you’ve been following the Microsoft Education blogs, you’ll probably be aware of Microsoft’s Office 365 Pro Plus Benefit for Students and the advantages it has been bringing to higher education students in the UK.
Over the coming months look out for more blogs that will explore scenarios where students can use features of the package to enhance their Higher Education experience.
In case you’re not familiar with the Office 365 Pro Plus Benefit for Students, any institution worldwide that licenses Office for staff and faculty can provide access to Office 365 for students at no additional cost. As a result, more than 35,000 institutions worldwide are automatically eligible to deliver the package to their students.
Office 365 Pro Plus includes all the familiar and full Office applications, such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and offers the ability for these to be locally installed on up to five devices and available offline.
Furthermore, when a school combines the Office Pro Plus Benefit with our other cloud services – Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Lync Online – of which all are available free through Office 365 Education, students have access to the same set of productivity tools and services used by Fortune 500 companies all over the world.
Lync and primary research
Helene – lync dissertation 1
Primary research is an interesting challenge that many students have to undertake during their university career, normally in their final year for their dissertation or final project. This involves carrying out their own research to gather data to analyse correlations, trends and ultimately, to try and find solutions to a particular topic, for example ‘the impact social media has on consumer engagement’. Most students will choose to gather data by sending surveys, carrying out interviews or focus groups, undertaking experiments and observing behaviour of people (or animals if they’re reading a science degree).
Limitations on creative thinking
The biggest common denominator that impacts students’ creativity regarding any face-to-face research is cost. Unfortunately, students don’t tend to be funded for their final year projects which means that if they want to interview a particular candidate from another city, or even another country, they are likely to have to abandon the idea. Similarly, students don’t tend to carry out telephone interviews or telephone surveys due to costs.
My student group are all currently trying to choose the most suitable primary research methods for our projects and I can comfortably say that lots of them are quickly choosing online surveys as a method, because of the ease and cost. It’s been frustrating to see that students who are really keen to carry out interviews to gather qualitative research are considering altering the geographical focus of their topics to Scotland so that they can interview people at low cost. You can imagine how limiting this can be to students’ aims.
Helene – lync dissertation 2
The options that Lync technology can provide via the ProPlus Benefit for Students are impressive!
Video capabilities: Interviews or even group interviews could be carried out with anyone in the world using the video conferencing capabilities, in a secure environment: if a candidate from an external organisation (such as a financier, a scientist or a government minister) were being interviewed, the link to the meeting would smartly slot into their work calendars and they could join the video call using the Lync browser app which would provide a formal and professional experience.
Poll feature: Once on the call, students could directly gather illustrated data using the Lync poll feature which could be really useful in providing quantifiable statistics to strengthen the arguments they are deducing from their qualitative interview analyses.
Helene – lync dissertation 3
Record feature: The fact that calls and video conferences could be recorded (obviously with the consent of the interviewee) is really significant as students are required to refer back to their interviews to examine patterns in opinions, semantics and behaviour. The simplicity of this feature would be heaven to students and save them from investing in unnecessary recording apparatus – seriously, students have been piping up in class and asking my lecturer where they can buy ‘cheap recording equipment you see the LAPD use in the movies’..
Helene – lync dissertation 4
There is no question about the value Lync technology could bring to students’ studying experience. By having enterprise-grade tools at their fingertips, students can be empowered to stretch themselves to their full capabilities and have a really interesting research experience. Thanks to the Office 365 ProPlus Benefit for Students which I reiterate, is no extra cost for universities who are already licensing Office, universities can provide an exceptional standard of learning to their students.
Integrated Mobility Solutions empowers your employees with one single interface to connect from the office, home, or the road. The solutions provide consistent access on the go, more effective team collaboration and faster response times to your co-workers, clients and partners. With Mobility solutions you can work from anywhere. Easily access your employees on the go – via email, phone or chat
Why Mobility?
Increase workplace flexibility – let your employees work from anywhere.
Enable your employees to be reachable real-time.
Improve collaboration and drive innovation in your business.
How can Mobility help you?
It simplifies user experience: Use your mobile device the same way as your desk phone.
It improves customer satisfaction: With Integrated Mobility you can always be reached by your customers with a single phone call.
It brings savings: With Mobility Integration you can eliminate desk phones for your mobile employees.
Sprint Mobile Integration
CallTower – Sprint Mobile Integration (SMI) allows you to have your desktop, home office and mobile phone fully integrated so that you can work from your home, office or on the road seamlessly. SMI will simplify your life with:
One Phone Number: You can be reached with a single phone number that rings both your desk and cell phone.
Simple Extension Dialing: Just dial 4 digits to reach any office extension from your cell phone. Others in your office can reach you by dialing your 4-digit extension no matter where you are at. Your location does not matter it is as if you are always in the office.
One Voicemail: Have your cell voicemail centralized in your corporate email inbox. Plus have access to text conversions of your voice messages.
Integrated Calling: Easily move from mobile to desk phones to get the most out of mobility.
CallTower Complete 2013 for Lync Mobile
CallTower Complete 2013 for Lync gives you the freedom to stay connected on the go. CallTower Complete 2013 for Lync is supported for iOS, Windows Mobile and Android devices.
VoIP, conferencing and video and calls can be made and received from all CallTower Complete 2013 for Lync Mobile devices.
Presence status updates can be published and viewed from all supported mobile devices.
Instant messaging can be done from all supported mobile devices.
Custom notes, including out-of-office status, can be added from all supported mobile devices.
Full contact lists and groups are available to view and search from all supported mobile devices.
