Well now, I’ll be honest, we don’t find something all the time.  In fact about 3 out of 10 we won’t find any mistakes.  But since we also don’t charge anything to those 3 out of 10 either, I thought that was a funny reason not to try to find the mistakes.

But as I probed further, he said something that is just plain counter-intuitive, “I just don’t think the utility companies make that many mistakes.”

Well, I will have to beg to differ on that one.  We have made quite a nice business out of the mistakes utility companies make.  But as that customer really caught my attention, I decided to find some examples, not just our clients, of some mistakes.  Click on the links below to different stories.

http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2010/05/15/Bill-error-catches-up-with-Texas-woman/UPI-50631273941354/

http://www.wzzm13.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=121299&catid=216

http://www.smdailyjournal.com/article_preview.php?id=131516&title=SmartMeter%20trouble

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20100511/ARTICLES/100519877?Title=PG-E-admits-problems-with-SmartMeters

There really are too many to post.  I really like this last one about the Smart Meters not being so smart.  Anyway, I wish I would’ve had these stories when I talked with that guy.  Maybe he will read this blog and realize that the utility companies are always making mistakes.  Don’t be the sucker that just writes out the check every month without calling us to check them.  And since it doesn’t cost anything to have them audited, there really is no excuse…

However, like in anything, you pay for what you get.  So, if we do the audit, and find nothing, we charge nothing—you get nothing, we get nothing—and the work is at our cost.  And if we can recover money or lower the bills by finding errors, we will both share the savings.  It is that simple. 

And a word about how we share the savings—we only charge after our client has saved the money.  If we don’t save, again, we don’t charge.  So if a client goes out of business, moves locations, shuts down a plant, and it negates the savings because the meter is no longer being used—there are no charges from us.  As a Utility Bill consultant, we have to prove our value to our clients in order to be successful.  And the way we do that boils down to saving money.

If you are curious about what we might find on your bills, call us and talk with an auditor—you got it—for FREE!

We just finished up a successful trade show at the Indiana State Fairgrounds in Indianapolis, IN.  We were new to the Farm Equipment Show, and to the agriculture trade shows in general, but we found it to be a good venue to discuss utility audits with farmers, grain suppliers, and equipment manufacturers.

It suprised me that not too many people had heard of utility audits, and most were new to the general concept of cost recovery auditing to help efficiency.  In fact, we were tracked down by a couple of radio stations that serve the agricultural market in the midwest to do interviews on what we do and how we can help today’s farmers.  It brought such attention that we made their top story on their website as well.

Read the Story: http://www.hoosieragtoday.com/wire/news/00026_electricaudit_222919.php

Listen to the Interview: http://hatchat.net/?p=1222

Everyone seemed to be receptive to the idea of having an audit done without any upfront cost.  And about half of them were big enough energy users to qualify.  We also met some industry experts who helped us understand the energy use in the industry.  Gary Apel at National Starch was lucky enough to have a booth close to ours, which made it really easy for us to scatter him with question after question about the industry.  Gary was a lot of help in pointing us in the right direction.

We’re glad we made the trek out to wintry Indianapolis for the show and hope to have the same success next year!

Edison had been in business for 5 years under the managment of Joseph Bigler.  Edison mainly served Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, and had a handful of clients in Flordia and Indiana.  All employees have now been transitioned to Discovery Energy, and all clients are now being serviced by Discovery as well.

“The move just made sense,”  remarked Discovery CFO Gunther Fischli, “Discovery’s clients will benefit from Edison’s experience, and Edison’s clients will benefit from Discovery’s experience and expertise.  Once a client experiences collecting savings from one audit, they want to participate in all audits for which they qualify.  This merger helps us offer them more opportunities for savings.”

For more information on the transaction.  Please contact Discovery’s home office.

Discovery Energy Media Department

Workers Compensation Audits will be performed just like our Utility Audits–100% performance based.  The minimum spend to qualify for a performance based WC audit is $100,000 per year in premiums.  But the best part is–our auditors have a refund average of $30,000, with a 69% success ratio!!

So tell your friends–with that kind of refund, they will owe you more than dinner!  We now not only reduce your energy bills, but your insurance costs will now also fall victim to Discovery Energy’s Cost Recovery Audits.

2nd place team

Our first trip to the annual FICAP (Florida Independent Concrete & Associated Products) Accociation golf tournament at Southern Dunes Country Club in Haines City, Florida yielded us a second place finish, and more importantly, a host of companies eager to save money and reclaim refunds on their energy usage.

We were bested by one stroke for 1st place, but our team had the best shot in the tournament.  Bill Edwards took out his putter 50 yards from the green, and rolled one within 8 feet of the hole.  I’ve never seen a putter out of the bag for a long shot like that.  Amazing.

We have saved the association members thousands of dollars already, and we are working on a few more we met at the golf tournament.  All in all, it was a great trip.  We look forward to next year’s outing.

We had our research team (Gunther) update our auditing statistics, and I thought you might be curious of what they turned out to be, so here they are:

• Audits that resulted in savings — 68.4%
• Average size of refund — 67.2% of monthly utility expenditure
• Average size of ongoing savings — 9.4% of monthly utility expenditure
• Average total savings — 14.8% of monthly expediture
• Closing ratio of client appointments to clients sold — 83.9%

We have more, but I guess those are the most interesting.  As an account rep, I’m the most proud of the 83.9% closing ratio.  Although, it is a pretty easy sell when you are selling something on a contingency basis that doesn’t hardly require much work at all on the clients part.  We have a guy in the office who sold life insurance in a previous career, and he tells us the horror stories of walking uphill both ways in the snow to sales appointments.

Anyway, I’ll keep you posted with anything interesting that we come across…