There are certain markets out there that are fiercely competitive, and consumers stand to benefit if they recognize this.

A few examples are phone and cable service. Another is electricity, at least here in Connecticut where the industry was deregulated a number of years ago in an effort to lower electricity costs to consumers.

Just a few months ago, on New Year's Eve, as a matter of fact, i devoted some time to studying various electrical providers and their rates on the state of CT website. I picked the cheapest rate, at that time, 7.98 per kilowatt hour offered by Dominion Energy. At the time, it was a cost savings to me as I had switched a year prior to Public Power at .099 per kh.

So I signed up, figured I had a good deal (it was a fixed priced locked in for 1 year) and promptly forgot about it.

That was just 3 months ago, and then yesterday my mother alerted me to the fact that another provider, North American Power (NAP), was offering electricity at 6.49 per kh.

Back to the state website I went, and I saw that NAP was offering various unspecified promotional deals, but their standard rate was much higher.

So I went to the NAP website and read the Terms of Service, which said that promo rate was only good for 3 months and then the rate would go variable.

So i advised my mom not to go with them; however, while on the state website, i saw that Dominion, the company that now provides my power at 7.98 pher kh, was offering electricity at 6.98, good for 1 year.

I called them this morning at around 7 am and was surprised someone answered the phone. I was prepared to be disgruntled and to end up switching to another provider, but when i said i was a current customer and saw their lower rate on the state website, he said i could "re-enroll" in the new program, no problem. Which is what i did.

Now the difference in my total monthly charge for electricity generation between my old rate and the new one is just $2 and change, but I figure, electricity is electricity. The product is identical, regardless of where you get it, so why pay a PENNY more than you need to? A lot of people go running around and waste gas to save a few bucks at one store or another; i figure it's surely worth the effort when i can achieve the savings in 2 minutes on my computer.

I am sure that electric providers count on the fact that most people, once they switch, tend to forget about it and move on with other things, so lesson learned here was, if you snooze, you lose. If I hadn't bothered to check the state website for current rate offerings, i'd never know I could get electricty more cheaply than I am now, even when the cheaper rate is offered by the same company I'm now getting my power from!