News Stories

Last night I was looking through the AOL news feed when I came across an article about a 93 year old man that died after the electric company shut off his electricity.(Article) He owed $1000 in electric bills so they used a device called a limiter to limit the amount of electricity that he could use. Once he reached a certain amount the electricity shut off and someone would have to come out to reset it.
According to the company they don't think anyone made contact with the man to explain to him what is was, how it worked and what he needed to do. They put the limiter on on Jan 13th and by the 17th he was dead.
Now I know that people need to pay their bills but the company says it is in no way at fault for this mans death. He was all alone in this world. No family to help him out and now he is dead. He lived in Michigan a place notorious for cold winters! What would that company be saying if it was a single mom with kids? A family? Didn't this man deserve a little compassion in these hard economic times?
The Company stated that they have said before that neighbors should look out for each other. That would be great but how many of you know your neighbors these days? When I was younger I knew them but times are changing, that is why we wanted to move to Small Town Indiana and we still don't know our neighbors.
All this company needed to do was contact the man and give him options. Let him know what he needed to do if the limiter shut the power off. The names and address of places to stay warm. An option for paying his bill in a different manner. To not contact the man after placing a limiter on his home was negligence. Companies used to care about their customers. This shows exactly how big companies are degrading our way of life.
To deny a human being the right to be warm and in turn contributing to his death is wrong, no matter what that heads of this company tell themselves so they can sleep at night!