Utilities

Commercials bombarded us for months and months with high-priced stars (indirectly paid by us) for Southern California Edison begging us to give our “appliances the afternoon off” so that Edison wouldn’t have to build more expensive power plants. But what’s this? The Times reports an oversupply of power of such magnitude that the average family will pay $1 a month extra due to partially idle power plants . Seems like we’ve been burned at both ends.

Not to be outdone the telephone companies got their regulators to approve the “perfect” product, the infamous “976” numbers. Telephone revenues soared as consumers paid for hundreds of thousands of “informational” calls that they (or their children) rang up. Not yet satisfied, the companies announced phase two of their plan; “Yes indeed, the public can choose not to use (lockout) our ‘976’ service--for an additional fee.” What unregulated enterprise is there that is able to charge the public for both using and for not using its service?

I used to believe regulators existed to protect us from unreasonable charges made by monopolies that wouldn’t occur in a competitive market.

SAM J. SCHOFIELD

Fountain Valley