Privatization Gone Wrong

Their methods were crude, and I had one on my doorstep that I turned down, and his parting shot over his shoulder was" If you don't want to save money, that's pretty stupid". Had I been a few years younger, he would have had an accident on his way back to his car !! However, what they did to my mother-in-law was rather disgusting. They got her to sign the contract, and at age 79, she really didn't take the time to read it. She thought they were fron Hydro One, and since her daughter works for them, she just assumed (?) that it was ok. What she now finds out is that they hold a 5 year contract, but it is billed by Hydro One. She wanted to start paying equal monthly payments, since she is now 80 and doesn't like the large bills in the winter. She has an electric furnace, so you know what that means in the cold weather. Huge bills !! However, Hydro One simply does the billing for OHE, and cannot offer equal payments to those specific customers. Don't ask ! I got involved, called OHE and was completely stonewalled by the lady that answered the phone. She told me the contract could not be cancelled. Then she told me that the contract could be cancelled, at the cost of $12 per month left on the contract, which is 43 months. This comes to a total of $516. Isn't that nice. I asked to speak to her supervisor several times and was told this was not a supervisory problem. No passing the buck here. Our Ontario Tories let this happen to our seniors. I know we should all read the fine print, but in this case the company reps misrepresented themselves as Hydro One employees, not in so many words, but by their very actions. This is an example of privatization. Look out for the bottom line, and get ready to read every word of any document that you are ever asked to sign. I find this despicable, and I am going to complain to our new Liberal cgovernment. This should not have happened for a couple of reasons. One reason is she lives in a retirement community, which has a "no door-to-door" policy, so they broke another rule. I can only hope not too many others got caught up in this , as it can be costly to get out of it. Another example of letting the marketplace dictate. Beware. If you want to call the company above and lodge a complaint, please feel free to do so.