I moved into my new apartment downtown March 30. After a few days of settling in, a man who could barely speak English came to my door. He wanted to see my hydro bill to see if I could get a discount. I told him I just moved in and that I hadn’t received my hydro bill yet. The man said he would call me later. No big deal, right?

This afternoon, my phone rang. “Hello, Is this Jordan? Can I come and look at your hydro?”. I said sure, that’s fine – whatever “look at your hydro” means, I don’t know anything about that stuff. He made his way into my place with a clipboard and some papers to sign. He asked to see my hydro receipt so I gave it to him. He immediately started writing information down on this paper titled “APPLICATION FORM”. He didn’t tell me who he worked for, he just said it was free to sign up and that you get better rates for your upcoming hydro bills. He then turned to me and said “Sign here”. I said “Uhmmm, I want to look things over first before I sign anything. Can I read the pamphlet?”.

He gave me a pamphlet and said “You just need to sign here, nothing is confirmed until we call you later and ask if you want to still go with us”. In my mind, when you sign something, it’s a done deal. So I told him that it was strange that he wanted me to sign something but that I still had to get confirmed. I asked him what the confirmation process is all about and what are the things they look for when confirming with consumers? He answered me with some non-relevant statement and then emphasized again how it was free to sign up. I told him AGAIN I wanted to look things over before signing a document. He just kept saying how it was free and how I should trust him – this sounds like desperation to me. I told him my answer was no and that I want to look further into this but he was so persistent to get this application signed that it was like with every no I told him, it went in one ear and out the other.

Andrée (my girlfriend) was sitting on the couch and I looked over at her, she had a look of suspicion on her face. She came up and stood beside me while he talked and said “Right now, we feel pressured to sign something and we feel uncomfortable, this feels like a scam”. The man laughed hysterically. Once again, I told him I was feeling the pressure, which is definitely not a good thing when you’re trying to sell someone something.

I asked him “Why is it such a big deal for me to sign this right this instant? Why can’t I have time to think about it?”. He replied with “Well, it’s not really convenient for me to come back out here again”. I then said abruptly, “It’s not about you, you are trying to sell something to me, the consumer. You should be happy I’m even considering this, with all the pressure you’ve put on us within the past minutes. All I want to do is look over this for myself”.

Andrée then asked to have my hydro bill back and to see the application form. Good thing she took both of those back, because I googled “Universal Energy” and the second result was titled “Universal Energy SCAM”. I started reading some of the things people were posting here about how they were scammed. Even though this one guy didn’t sign the application form, Universal Energy still enrolled him in their “partnership” with the other hydro company he was with. He had to fight to get out of the contract he didn’t sign. If you want to get out of their contract, they expect you pay a $500+ fee. Watch out.