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| St jacobs oil (Photo credit: Tim & Selena Middleton) |
"there are lies, damned lies and statistics"
and I have also heard a senior manager use the phrase
"Manage mushrooms, keep in the dark and feed horse-shit!".
Do these ideas deeply offend you ? -
They do me !
At kWIQly we interpret numbers to help people manage energy. It means lighting up the truth and sharing it when people do not want to hear it.
So one of our biggest issues is overcoming B.S. about energy savings from con-men, snake-oil salesmen, or put simply - crooks. So I am going to tell some lies ! - I am going to tell you some lies people tell, how you can spot them, and what to do about it !
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| English: mushrooms (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Like a cold-reader they will promise you voices from the dead if it will make them money, and they know exactly how to make money - they must tell you what you want to hear.
If you are a 'shroom' you must just love what they feed.
By the way - There is a link from spiders to mushrooms. which I feel a need to quickly explain : - So this post is about unweaving webs of lies ; interestingly in German a 'Spinnner' - is a spider and 'du spinnst'" - means literally 'you spin - a web', or - You're totally nuts' or even you are 'full of it' - i.e. bullshit. So - spiders and mushrooms go well together
I have ranted about building energy management systems snakeoil before but this one is rather different - this is not about "cure-all-ills" but about "ways that people lie". Not in general, but to you the energy manager.
OK...
Here is lie #1
"We have an energy saving product that will save you > 15% in 'seasonally adjusted savings'. We will look at your last six months bills and get a pattern of use that is weather adjusted, we will implement product "X" in summer and monitor for another six months, and then you will use less energy, even after we have adjusted for the weather."
- The beauty of this lie is that it is true factually, but the buyer is not buying the truth, rather; they buy what it implies. What is implied is untrue (a lying statistic) - which must be inspected, exposed, rejected and stomped on !
So, if you can spot the trick or have any idea please comment below, with proper respect or "props" ( I love my new vocabulary: ) ) to anyone who gets it.
If not do come back tomorrow and I will talk you through it, and after that I will tell you another lie !
Update energy saving fraud # 1 - Explained - as promised - (last chance to comment ) ...
Here is lie #2 - "How Now Green Con"
http://blog.kwiqly.com/2012/07/how-now-green-con-fraudster-challenge.html
