IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR A MEDIUM, someone who communicates with the dead, you may be interested in one of the men who deliver monthly bills of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT).

My colleague Ester Dipasupil found out recently about this guy?s ?supernatural? abilities when she was tracing for the nth time her PLDT bill. A check with PLDT revealed that the January bill was received and signed for by ?Atty. F. C. Dipasupil.? Ester?s father, who was a journalist and former president of the National Press Club, has been resting in peace the past 24 years although the telephone number remains listed in his name. So this messenger must have extraordinary gifts to have gotten him to sign the delivery receipt.

As Ester said in her e-mail to PLDT, ?I am also curious to find out how my father was able to receive the billing notice on Jan. 9, 2010, when he has been dead for the past 24 years. Maybe the LBC courier (PLDT bills apparently are delivered through the LBC courier service) brought the bill all the way to Bauan, Batangas, where he is buried and he must have materialized as a ghost to accept it.?

This is not the first time Ester has complained to PLDT about non-receipt of her bill. Naturally, if clients do not get their bills, they are unable to pay them on time. People do not sit around checking if bills have arrived. They will only be made aware of the problem when the next bill comes or when they are served a notice of disconnection.

Ester said, ?Last year, I got my PLDT bill (after 13 calls to customer service, all of which I recorded faithfully) three months later, with matching notices of disconnection. Of course, PLDT blamed the courier service. I said, well, their couriers were either blind, mute or could not read because: 1. We have lived in the same house, on the same street, with the same neighbors for 42 years now; 2. surely, if [the courier] can read and was not able to find the house, (although I don?t know why not, unless he is blind) he could have asked around (so he must be a mute); 3. he does not know how to read.

Adding insult to injury, Ester says the courier has no difficulty finding their house when it is Christmas time or when he is delivering the notice of disconnection (actually, last Christmas, my phone bill came with a ?Merry Christmas? envelope although the courier did not return for it or I was not at home when he did).

Ester said: ?I also told PLDT that I found it ironic that they could easily cut off the services of a client in good standing?and they can check their records (my family has been a PLDT client since 1954?older than PLDT president Manny Pangilinan)?but could not even run after customers who fly the coop with huge unpaid bills!?

Rewarding savers

The government, particularly the Department of Energy, may want to discuss with the Manila Electric Company, electric cooperatives and other power companies a practice now being adopted in some parts of the United States. With the looming threat of a serious energy shortage, the practice might give Filipino consumers more reason to reduce power use only to the most essential.

The New York Times reported recently that power companies in some American states were encouraging energy saving by giving financial rewards to consumers for reducing electrical consumption. The reward usually comes in the form of rebates or partial refund of payments.

Since 2004, for instance, the Idaho Power Company has been paying farmers to cut power use at crucial times. In a related program, it pays homeowners to turn off their air-conditioners briefly at times of high demand. The Times reported that the policy resulted in drop-offs of as much as 5.6 percent of peak power demand. To pay for energy-saving measures, Idaho customers?individuals and companies?are charged a 4.75-percent ?energy efficiency? rider on their electric bills. Actually, this is no different from membership in a cooperative where you get back whatever you pay for services like loans or purchases through dividends.

And the rebate appears to be quite substantial?one farmer getting a reimbursement of $700 (more than P32,000 at the exchange rate of P46-$1) for turning off his power pumps a few afternoons in the summer months.

The Times reported it was more than just the financial reward that convinced the people of Idaho to practice energy conservation. ?They have been largely receptive to the utility?s (Idaho Power) arguments that it is cheaper to save energy than to build new power plants,? the story said.

According to the Times, Steve Nadel, executive director of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, an advocacy group, estimated that about half of US utility companies had programs that paid customers to cut use during peak periods.

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