Switching to Green

When I attended Melbourne’s sustainable living festival earlier this year, I wrote myself a list of actions – things that I hadn’t gotten around to doing or new ideas that had popped up, in which I could make a small change in my life to live more ethically and sustainably. Most items on the list I completed within a couple of weeks of the festival. The last item on my list was switching to green power. The reason why it ended up as the last action, was mostly because it wasn’t as easy as it could have been.

I went to the website of my supplier in search of the options. After reading that I could switch to 100% renewable electricity, I found that to sign up, I had to complete a web form and wait to be called by a sales rep. I could nominate what time they called, so I requested after 6pm, so as not to be interrupted at work. After about a 2-week wait, someone phoned me during working hours, when I was too busy to take the call. Also, I needed to have my account number on me to make the switch, which I didn’t have. Another two weeks passed, at which point I received another call during business hours. Fortunately, this time I wasn’t too busy and had my bill handy so I could make the switch.

The person who called me offered me a 5% discount if I committed to 2 years with them, which I refused. They then asked me to hold, and a few seconds later I was put through to someone else in an inappropriate department, who had no idea who I was or why I was being transferred. After going through the identification process for a second time, she transferred me to a third person. The third operator started the same spiel about the 5% discount which I again declined, but her response was that I couldn’t switch to renewables unless I committed to 2 years. When I asked her to confirm this statement, she got a bit flustered and put me on hold for about 5 mins. Miraculously, when she returned, she was able to add a green power levy to my existing account, with no time commitment, just like the website said they could!

In her confirmation ‘script’, she explained that an information pack was going to be sent to my home address. WTF?!?!? I asked her whether there was an alternative to sending paper documents to confirm signing up to green power, but apparently not! An email option is not available. She clearly didn’t get that it was just a teensy bit counter-productive to send me glossy printed material containing information that, as it turned out, was readily available on their website and went straight into the recycling bin.

Corporate blindness/stupidity/whatever you want to call it really pisses me off. Do they not understand that making it easier for people to sign up will better equip them to achieve improvements without actually having to fork out the dosh themselves, which they can then use as a selling point? And aside from the environmental impact, how much money they could save just by adding a minor functionality for email to their database?

Grrr… *bangs head on nearest hard surface*