In my city, we buy power from ComEd and the city owns and maintains the utility. We get better rates ($.62 vs. $.88 last I checked) and it is much more reliable. I grew up in section of town where our side of the street was ComEd and across the street was City power. I can remember many outages that the other side of the street was not out. I think they were 10 times more reliable.
But getting to your topic, if you cut a tag for city power, it is a $75 fine and they enforce it. I think $225 for a second offense. If you need access you have to call in and in 20 min. they’ll have a person out to pull the meter. But it works best if you preschedule everything. Kind of a hassle, but at least they are responsive. I don’t mind as much as others. You have to (get to) charge a little more for the hassle, and panel changes are more expensive, but once you learn to work with them, it’s just another routine. It forces you to have to work their stuff dead, which is always a good thing, plus it evens the playing field because everyone has to do it that way. The other thing I like about it is that it intimidates the out of town competition.
ComEd on the other hand is a free for all. You never know what to expect from them. Sometimes they want to see the inspection sticker before they’ll hook up, sometimes not. I once had them come out for a service change and tell me they didn’t know how to shut off the power, so I’d have to do it live. Tags have never been an issue with them. We always used to cut, do our work, never look back and never hear anything about it. My brother even had one guy give him a hand full of tags, same color as theirs. We usually employ a strategy of opening the tag in such a way that it can be put back together. I do that just to avoid any potential problem in case you happen across the one guy that says you can’t do that. To be honest I have heard so many conflicting stories from them (yes their own people) that I don’t worry about it. The absolute majority say just call them when we’re done and they’ll replace it.
[This message has been edited by Jps1006 (edited 03-05-2004).]
