Hydro - The Monopoly by Darrin DeRoches August 2 - 8, 2012 Did you know that if your electricity is turned off for more than six months you will have to have several inspections and spend hundreds of dollars in costs? Did you know that the basic cost of having electricity connected but not running costs you over $60 dollars a month or about $800 for the year? I had a client that was redeveloping his commercial property and had two services for his building. Since it was vacant, he was not using any electricity and he figured he would just use the one service he was paying for and leave the other alone. After a year and a half passed, hydro disconnected the second service and again he thought nothing of it since he was not using it anyways.      Well a month ago he changed the direction of the property and decided to lease it out to new tenants and when he called hydro to re–connect the service he figured it would be pretty simple. Boy was he wrong. First off – hydro had a bill for about $2,300 for the cost of the service sitting dormant for the year and a half and disconnected for another year or so. He argued that he did not use any electricity but they explained that the base cost of over $60 a month plus the usage of the last tenant that was not paid came up to over $2,300. He argued and called supervisors and pretty much lost it. His new tenant was moving in and the hydro was still off. After two weeks of calls and running around, the final answer was simple – pay the $2,300 or they will not turn on the power for the new tenant. So he had no choice but to pay the ransom and then asked when they would re–connect. Two or three weeks! WTF!     It now seems he has to get a $300 inspection from the electrical authority which happens on Wednesdays or Fridays, plus a meter locate. The inspection made sense but what is a meter locate? Hydro will send someone out in the next two or three weeks to look at the meter and determine it has not moved or been tampered with. This will cost you another $500 in construction costs. The landlord was losing his mind and after paying the ransom he now had to pay another $800 and wait two or three weeks to have the hydro turned on for a new tenant.     I have done a lot of business with this landlord so I stepped in. I called the company – explained to them he would lose this tenant if it took three weeks etc. and with a little bit of negotiations we had it all taken care of in under a week and over $3000 dollars.  One inspection took four minutes, the next 10 minutes and connection under 15 minutes. The landlord then figured it would have cost him about two thousand dollars in base fees if he kept paying for a service that he was not using, but the stress and aggravation was not worth the extra $1,100 he had to pay. If you figured in the deposit that the new tenant has to pay, it was pretty much a wash.  V     Darrin DeRoches is a local real estate and mortgage broker. He can be reached to answer questions, comments or stories about real estate experiences through this weekly column at mail@uniquerealty.ca.