Cooperatives Responsive to member Needs

October is National Cooperative Month, a perfect time to focus on the “the Cooperative Difference.” The main differences in a cooperative type of electric utility and an investor owned utility lies with our priorities. One of the top priorities at your local electric cooperative is to make sure that we are constantly listening to you, our consumer-owners. Working for a consumer-owned company, like Sequachee Valley Electric Cooperative, makes our job great. Because we have only one, simple, business rule - what is good for our consumers is good for us. And that helps us be more responsive to your needs, more accountable to you, our owners.

And because we're a local company, we're close enough and small enough to notice the needs of a single consumer from the factory owner to the small business owner on Main Street ; from residential consumer to the hard-working farm family in the country. And now, as a Touchstone Energy cooperative, an alliance of almost 650 co-ops nationwide, we are able to build upon the local connection we have with our members with the combined resources and knowledge of the other Touchstone Energy cooperatives to better meet the needs all or our members from residential to factories and other major employers in our community.

Why is being locally owned and operated so important? Because more and more, we hear reports of other utility companies closing their local offices and moving out of town in order to save money. And when that happens, their customers have to do business long distance, frequently talking to customer service representatives hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles away who don't know them, their families or even their communities.

Your local electric cooperative is different. Our first obligation is to our consumers, because you are the owners. You can still stop by the local office and talk to someone you know about any part of your service. And when you call your electric cooperative, you'll speak to someone closeby who knows your community and what's happening in it.

Being committed to the community we serve means making the determination that service to the community must involve more than just making sure your electric service is reliable. When others are cutting back on service, we continue to go the extra mile on consumer and community service. That's standard operating procedure for an electric cooperative. And that's why we're different from other utilities.

There will always be someone nearby you can talk to about any aspect of your electric service. Consider where we are, and how often we interact. At first glance, it may seem that there is little connection between school kids waiting for their bus and the line crew in the local co-op's truck. But look again. Those line crews working on utility poles probably have kids waiting for their school bus alongside yours. We're connected to our consumers, our neighbors, by much more than power lines.

The staff of your local co-op also understands that paying attention to the details and the little things is important. That's the added benefit of being served by a local electric cooperative. That's why we'll continue to do everything we can to help improve the quality of life of the people we serve. Whether it is an energy audit to evaluate the insulation in your home and how effectively your appliances are working or providing information in co-op publications on how you can lower your electricity bill, your co-op is committed to providing you with a superior level of service.

These are tangible examples of the kind of commitment your local electric cooperative makes to you and our other consumer-owners every day.

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