Hello. This is Dave Ganyelin, chief marketing officer of Integrity Square channeling PD Mo, Pete Moore, for today's Thursday fast break, in the official uniform of, Integrity Square sporting my EBITDA hat for those of you who are watching the the, listening to the podcast. We're here today with Justin Rumack, from David Energy. I'm gonna turn it over. We have some really interesting stuff to share today, real quick. I'm gonna turn it over to Justin to have him introduce himself and
David Energy. Those of you may recall we've interviewed in the past James, the CEO. We did a webinar with him. It was great. We'll link to that in the show notes. Take it away, Justin. David, great to be here. Sorry. I don't have that beautiful hat. Everyone gets to look at my nice shiny head, in lieu. But, great to meet everyone. My name is Justin Rumack. I'm head of
business development over at David Energy. We are a retail electricity provider here in the states of New York and serving multiple states as well, but we're here in New York. And, yeah, we'd love to, you know, speak and, and speak on what we're doing these days. Awesome. Yeah. That that webinar with James was great, but I I feel like we reconnected recently, and I you brought up this idea of, slamming, I believe it's called. And it's super important that
people know this is happening. This is a real danger to the halo sector. Maybe you could speak on that and talk about how what this is, a, and b, how to, you know, have their staff not get slammed and what they could do to prevent this from happening. Absolutely. So let's talk about what this is, this word slamming. Right? It it sounds
horrible. And and and, honestly, it is. You know, what it means and it's happening all over the place and particularly prevalent, in New York, the New York market, where someone will walk into your gym or your studio, and they will ask to see speak to a manager. And they will say, hey. I'm with Con Edison. I've gotta do a smart meter read. Can you please sign this so I
can get access to your meter? And, that person will sign up, and you just got signed up for a three year supply contract at an egregious rate that will now live buried on your Con Ed bill for however long it takes for anyone to identify. And I will tell you that, you know, we work with hundreds and hundreds of facilities
here in New York. And whenever I I do that first sort of review of the bills, if they've got multiple locations, I it ultimately, inevitably, I'm gonna find a bill where they've been slammed. And, you know, what does this mean, this slam in terms of dollars? I'll give you an example. I just looked at a portfolio last week, pulled up one of their accounts, saw that again, buried a line item on a bill that they are paying 30¢ a kilowatt hour with this supplier, when they
should be paying 10¢. Okay? Paying 30¢. Should be paying 10¢. Their bills were $15,000 a month. I went back to the customer and I said, hey. Are you familiar with this supplier? And they said, I've never heard of them. I said, okay. You've you've you've been slammed. Congratulations. Let's let let let's do something about it here. You know, let's get you off
this. So, you know, long story short, went down the path, helped them get out of it, and effectively overnight dropped their electric bill from $15,000 to $5,000. And That was just all facilities or one? That that was a large facility. Right? Where they where where where that was their electric bill for one facility. Right? So, obviously, depending on the size of the studio or facility and what their electric bills
are, that's gonna drive what the dollar value is. But but ultimately, when you are getting slammed, typically, you're not getting a good rate in that slam. Right. You know, these these people know what they're doing. They know they can get away with it. And people often ask, well, how do they get away with it? And they get away with it because someone actually signed a contract. Yeah. And so until they get called out on it and it gets brought to their attention and flagged, that, it was it
was an unauthorized signature who signed it. This is not a valid contract. They're gonna keep running with it, and that's why they get away with it. Right. Right. Now, I mean, it's technically legal, but it's crazy unethical. Is that fair to say? That's right. That's right. And, and and there's, you know, little tricks to the trade that we help in to help get you out of it quickly. Right? You
know? And and and not painful. But, yeah, it's been happening for a while now, and, as long as they're getting signatures, they're getting away with it. So, now what can facilities do to to and what does David Energy do to help this not happen? Yeah. So, you know, the problem is is that, you know, if anyone's looked at an actual electricity bill lately and and I will say sidebar, you know, I was a business owner myself for twelve years in New York City back in the
day. And I I don't think I looked at the fine details of an electric bill once in twelve years. Because, you know, everyone's operating their businesses. There's a lot of other things that you're prioritizing. You're thinking that electricity bills are non controllable costs. So, you know, I just wasn't really looking at it, but, it's there, and it's buried on the line items on a bill. But it's happening, and if you have a portfolio,
there's a lot to to to assess and look at. So, you know, what we're doing is David Energy, as as an electricity provider, you know, we are providing a an ongoing free bill health check service where, you know, we're policing your bills, and we're making sure that you're not getting slammed. And we're putting in you know, we're implementing rules, so that it doesn't happen. And if it does, we help you get out of it right away so it you don't take on a month or two of these, you know,
overspend, rates. So, you know, again, it's a service that's a it's a free service that we do provide to our customers as an add value, with us being your supplier. I do wanna point out to the to the to the ether that, David Energy is not a broker. You know, you may have had experiences in the past with brokers, and they've been calling you off the hook saying, hey. Work with us. Work with us. We are a direct supplier, so brokers actually come to us, to get rates.
So, yeah, as an as an add value service, we are protecting you guys from these these slams. Right now, if you're doing nothing by default, Con Edison is your supplier. They're not policing your accounts. Right. As you guys can probably guess, you know, they're not taking a close look to make sure that you're on the right rate class, not getting slammed, etcetera. So, that's what we're doing these days, Dave. We're really providing a lot of,
you know, value for for our brands. Yeah. Yeah. No. That's that's that's great. And I think that you made that distinction because I was gonna ask you about that. Like, there's a lot of business owners, myself, I you know, this was all new to me. There's that the supplier and the other what's the other term? The the supplier? They're brokers. They're entrepreneurs, consultants. Yeah. So, you know, it ConAd in in in New York could be both. Right? They could be the supplier and the
well, not the broker, but right? Yeah. So so you're you're right. It does get very confusing and convoluted. So just an education piece here to everyone. Con Edison is the utility Right. Here in New York City. They're always gonna be the utility. You're we're not replacing Con Edison. Okay? So if you work with David Energy, we actually show up on the actual Con Edison bill as the supplier. By default, if you do nothing, Con Edison is your supplier.
Gotcha. Gotcha. Yep. They don't generate the power. They're not they go out to market to purchase energy, just as David Energy does. Yeah. So, you know, with the why work with David Energy? It's because we're providing this this suite of additional ad value services where we're detecting slams, detecting, rate class errors. I'll tell you one another quick story. Uh-huh. We work with a large portfolio in New York City, where we identified that they were on the
wrong rate class on their bill. And you hear the word rate class, and who knows what that means? You know, not many people. Right? They are supposed to be in the s c nine rate nine rate class instead of two. And we helped them recover a hundred and $20,000 because they were getting over billed for three years Woah. At their facilities. And, again, this is something that went completely undetected on the bill because, you know, the the AP person, they don't know what
rate class is supposed they're supposed to be at. So, yeah. This is stuff you know, Con Edison makes mistakes. Right? So, you know, just having a a partner to to support you and keep an eye on your bills, to flag them when there's issues, easy way to identify, you know, to, you know, avoid a cost or or money saved initiative. Huge, huge value adds. And, the, the free service you offer, maybe you can talk about how how people can take advantage of that and, wrap up with your contact info, and
we'll be good. Perfect. Yeah. No. I really appreciate the time, David. So yeah. Honestly, it's simple. You know, getting in touch with me, Justin Rumack, and David Energy, you know, it's as simple as we wanna take a look at your most recent bill, you know, across your portfolio, and we will do a free bill health check. We'll run it through our system. We'll do the analysis, and we'll come back to you with, like, hey. You have a great situation. There's nothing
I could do for you right now on the supply side. You know, let's keep an eye on it. Let's revisit it in three or six months. Or, hey. At two of your locations, there's an issue here. Let's take a look here. You know, we can help you out, or, you know, you can run with it yourself. But we'll give you that free consultation, just to tell you what your current state is. And if it's something that you wanna continue engaging with us, you know, we're happy to see, you know, how else we can
help you and what else we can do for you. Awesome. Alright. Well, you heard it here first, folks. So thanks, Justin. This is great stuff. We'll make sure to get it out there. Awesome. Thanks, David. You got it. Take care.