I’ll keep writing each time I get a new visitor from National Home Services or their other companies. I’ll stop writing about National Home Services and these door to door energy sale when they start following these rules:

• Requires all sales solicitations to clearly disclose the prices, terms and conditions of all products and services
• Prohibits suppliers from misrepresenting their affiliation with a gas utility, governmental body or consumer group
• Provides consumers with a right to cancel within 10 days after the gas utility notifies them of the switch and 10 days after the date of the first bill if they find that the service is not as promised
• Limits early termination fees to $50 and requires any agreement containing an early termination clause to disclose the total cancellation fee

If National Home Services want people to use Greener appliances like their hot water tank, then stop forcing it down our throat by coming in to my home. If we need something, we will call you.

While I was over sea in Thailand, I was worry about having access to the internet and I was worry if my web sites would even load fast enough. When I first arrive in Bangkok I was living with my brother in his condo without internet, but I would go out and pay to use internet at the local internet café. It cost about 50 cent per hour, the price vary depending where you are. The most expensive internet café I have seen in Thailand was $2 dollars per hour and that was on the beachfront in Pattaya.

When I finally have my own hotel room in Pattaya, I stayed in a hotel called Prima Place, south of Pattaya near 3rd Road. I got a wireless internet connection with the local computer store. The internet provider was Maxnet. The first week with Maxnet was fine, there were no disconnection, and it was a little slow because of the wireless signal. However, after about the first week I was constantly getting disconnected or cannot connect to the internet. Sometime it would take hours for me to connect or extremely slow and sometime I did not use the internet for the entire day. It was very frustrating to say the least.

You know I’m a big basketball fan and when the NBA decided to have a basketball team in Toronto back in 1995 I watched the first basket scored by Damon Stoudamire. It had been 15 years since the Toronto Raptors started playing NBA basketball and as I recall before leaving Toronto for 2 months (December 2009) before leaving to Thailand. I was watching my last Raptors game before my trip and I didn’t see any Just Energy logo or recall the commentators mention anything about Just Energy during the Raptors game.

Now I am back from my 2 months trip and watching the Raptors game the night before. I notice at the end of the game there is this new segment called “Toronto Raptors Just Energy Player of the Game”. My first reaction was, WTF are they up to?!?

I personally never tried canceling any utility or natural gas contract but I had read some horror stories online where people got scam by signing these long term contracts and successfully got out. I hope this information can help someone who been scam by these deceptive door to door sales by some energy companies.

If you’re a home buyer, especially if you’re a new home owner, watch out for these door to door energy sales. They will dress up with their uniform with their cap and clipboard. Knocking on your door unannounced, promising to save you money, telling you to sign up or you will pay more on your energy bill. They are not there to save anyone money. No strangers knock on your door to save you money, they are doing it because they want your money.

Option #1: Send letter to Ontario Ministry of Consumer & Business Services

Ok, here is the first way to get out and cancel your energy contract without having to pay the ridiculous existing fees. If you have been convinced to buy a product or service based on a false, misleading, or deceptive sales pitch or advertisement, the Business Practices Act gives you the right to cancel the contract. This is for people living in Ontario and British Columbia, Canada. You can read the entire page here. Make sure you follow this instruction carefuly. Many people already successfully cancelled their long term energy contract using this guide. These energy door to door sales tricked you to sign their contract, don’t feel sorry for these douge bangs.

Newton Home Comfort is part of Universal Energy and National Home Services. Now Universal Energy been acquired by Just Energy in July 2009.

Read about Just Energy, Universal Energy and National Home Services.

If someone wearing a uniform by Newton Home Comfort or one of their other energy companies show up at your front door unannounced. Be very careful, they are very sneaky trying to sell you something without telling you all the terms and conditions under their contract.

Just a few days ago as I was browsing around my websites and notice all of my web sites on one particular server were hacked by a so called “Sarbot511″.

See the image below of the screen capture of one of my web site when the hack happened. If you want to, you can click here and see the actual file used by the hacker. (I scan it, there is no virus but it contain very bad html codes)

On February 25, 2010, CBS 2 investigative reporter Pam Zekman once again shined a spotlight on Just Energy, formerly known as U.S. Energy Savings Corp. CBS reported that the unregulated gas company that has sparked thousands of complaints to CUB may have changed its name, but it’s “playing some of the same deceptive games.” Watch the video here.

On February 24, 2010 a news article on CBS news on Just Energy salespeople charged with faking contracts, “The charges include criminal offences, such as fraudulent impersonation of a consumer, and violations of Alberta’s Fair Trading Act, including misleading a consumer. This isn’t the first time the company’s representatives have faced charges. A salesman was charged in October with two counts of making false statements to consumers, which is a violation of the Fair Trading Act.” Read the rest of the article here or read this article about Fraud alleged in energy contracts.

Here is another similar story in 2003, a company named Ontario Energy Savings Corp now operate as Just Energy was fined for forgeries. Read more here…

“This company (Just Energy) is engaged in the worst kind of consumer fraud, preying on people’s fears of rising natural gas bills and resorting to deception in order to boost sales.” said David Kolata, Citizens Utility Board’s Executive Director Read More…

Here’s a quote by Attorney General of Illinois.
“U.S. Energy (aka Just Energy) is purposely deceiving consumers,” Attorney General Madigan said. “Many of these families signed up for this program based on the false claim that they would save on their monthly utility bills. Instead, U.S. Energy (Just Energy) locked them into a contract that actually charged them more for natural gas.” Read more about the lawsuit here…

Here’s what bbb.org (Better Business Bureau) have about Just Energy, “Complainants allege they (Just Energy) were subject to misleading sales practices, such as unauthorized enrollment in the program offered, and/or misrepresentation of contract length, and/or guarantees of savings, and/or ability to cancel the contract after the initial three day period…” Reand more…

Here’s another quote on The Better Business Bureau’s website, “Other complaints allege that upon signing up with the company (Just Energy) on the premise of savings on gas, consumers’ bills did not decrease, but instead increased substantially.” Read more…

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has reached an agreement with U.S. Energy Savings Corp. (aka Just Energy) that will allow hundreds of Illinois consumers to terminate contracts and receive $1 million in restitution as a result of a lawsuit filed last year alleging that the alternative gas supplier sold fixed-rate gas contracts using misleading sales tactics that falsely promised significant consumer savings. Read More…

On December 13, 2005 The Better Business Bureau sent an advertising challenge to US Energy Savings Corporation (aka Just Energy), asking for the names and contact information of ten (I repeat 10 people) UESC consumers who enjoyed financial savings while enrolled in the company’s five year fixed-rate program. The company declined the Bureau’s request to provide such documentation, citing that doing so would be contrary to the company’s privacy policy. Read More…

“Overall, 98 percent of Illinois consumers who have signed up with U.S. Energy Savings (Now operate as Just Energy also operate in Canada as Ontario Energy Savings Corp, Alberta Energy Savings L.P, Energy Savings Group, Universal Energy Group Ltd., Universal Power, National Home Services, Newton Home Comfort) have lost money, with an average loss of $780 to date, CUB concludes.” Read it here, see the actual statistics done by The Citizens Utility Board here or read my post about it here.

Just came back from dropping off my broken HP laptop at the computer store. (My model was HP Pavilion DV6000 ) Apparently the repair man at the computer store said the HP laptops are one of the most repaired laptop brands in his store (about 20 each month), next to Toshiba and then Acer. I asked him which laptop he thinks gets the least repaired and he said the Acer Laptops are the least repaired.

Below is a chart for the malfunction rate of different brand of lap tops. Not sure how accurate this is, but you can read the rest of the article here and I’m not surprise HP is the worst.

Continuing on with my story…..I brought this HP laptop as refurbished directly from HP on eBay back in 2007. Once I had it mailed to my house and after about 10 minutes of first used, I smell something burning and then the computer shut itself off. Luckily for me there was a 1 year warranty with HP refurbished systems. I called the support and they gave me their location to their repaired shop closest to my house where I can send it back at no charge to have it fix.

I got another energy sale guy knocking at my door again this evening. But this time it was a sale guy from Universal Energy.

I open my door and rolled my eyes right away, and the Universal Energy sale guy immediately say that he is not here to “SELL YOU ANYTHING”.

But that was why I let him inside my house because he wasn’t selling me anything and so I thought.

Once he saw my water heater and took 4 seconds to look at. He turned around and told me that the black plastic pipe at the top of our water heater might leak out carbon dioxide. Then he quickly showed me this piece of paper that was suppose to came directly from Ontario government about the replacement of the black pipe. But he never said it was mandatory by the government also, if it was mandatory would you think my current water heater provider from Direct Energy came and replace it for us?

I brought this flash template called “Full XML Website V3” from FlashDen.net for one of my client who wanted a full flash website but had a small website. Let me just say this flash website was such a nightmare (because of my client not the flash template). I really learn my lesson on this one; I should have a sign contract by the client of what he will be getting before starting anything.

I started this website around late 2007 and it is now finally finish in early 2009 ( it was on and off). It took that long to do because most of the time I was waiting for the guy about 3 different occasions to send me stuff. By the time he finally sends me content to add to the site he wanted to change something or he wanted something new. I don’t know why I didn’t charge for all the extras, I was so stupid to go through all of this work.

Basically, I had to build 2 different photo galleries for him when I should only build 1. Also, I had removed the movie section of the website at the beginning; I had to put it back at the end because he forgot to tell me at the beginning he wanted a movie page. It sound easy to just put back the movie page, but after over 10 months with-out working on the flash website, it was hard for me to do and it took awhile to put the movie page back and have it functional.

In total, I spend about 1 month modifying this flash template from 2007-2009. All that work I got for $650 at the end. My initial thought was it would take me 1 week to do because all I had to do is add in the content, that’s why the cheap cost. I would buy a flash template and add his content, instead he lag the progress. He didn’t send me all the materials and wanting new features when he finally send the materials to me.