Bid Process/ The ABC Dirty Secret
To get the lowest price for anything, it's essential to get competitive bids. One of PUB's primary services is handling the bid process.
If you go direct to a Retail Electric Provider, you still pay retail rate because the Provider's marketing costs and other overhead are part of your contract. In addition, you will have to engage with a retail sales agent, whose commission will also be built into your rate. And the higher the margins the agent gets for their company, the bigger their year-end bonus. Their priority is not negotiating low contracts.
PUB's Buying Power
PUB customers benefit from our buying power. Typically, the rates we get are stripped of marketing and sales costs, so we start with a rate that's usually lower than buying direct. The process is very simple.
- Using our online form, provide us with some standard information that includes a Letter of Authorization to obtain your power-use history from your current lines and wires utility.
- Our experts analyze this information to establish a common baseline for the bids. This ensures that all providers are looking at the same data.
- We then obtain up to ten competitive bids from providers who best match your needs. Our legal team goes through each REP's contracts, looking for hidden fees, penalties and loopholes.
- Once we've done the due diligence, we send you the five lowest, qualified bids. YOU make the final choice.
When companies try to obtain competitive bids on their own, every Retail Electric Provider conducts their own energy analysis. This not only takes more time, but also makes it virtually impossible to do valid, apples-to-apples comparisons.
What Does It Cost
In these situations, The Texas Electrical Professionals Association considers a fee above five mils to be excessive. We guarantee that we will never request more than three mils on any commercial contract, and we never request any advance payments, commissions or bonuses.
For residential customers, our service is absolutely free. The rates you receive are the same as — and sometimes even lower than — what you'd be offered directly. PUB receives a referral fee from your Provider of choice.
