Well, you could always tap into your neighbor's line.... that would probably be the cheapest. But other than that, the cheapest may be to start a company and register as commercial. Most places have a preferential commercial rate. Obviously this has other overhead costs as well. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
That's kinda common here on our country (mostly known as jumper) especially on most of the squatters areas, actually it's free of cost but its illegal (you can bribe policemen here though whenever you've been caught
) and they are more likely prone to fire. I've heard that's what also some miners here on country do cuz electricity here was so expensive.What country are you in? Seems crazy to screw around with the meters. Let alone add theft to it.
Are you saying they are just bypassing the meters? Scary stuff.
I'm from the Philippines and that scary stuff was pretty common here
We are living on a poor country with high cost electricity so that poor people used to do that just to have an electricity, not only poor people. Also people that can afford to pay electricity do it just to have some savings on their income.Thanks for telling story about it OP. Interesting to say the least. Hard to imagine people doing this.
You could not pay me enough to work on live wire bypassing a meter for safety reasons. Let alone the legal reasons on not doing it.
In my country the fine for manipulating your electricity meter used to be about 200$ (i dont know the current fine), or in larger (industrial scale) theft cases 3 months prison.
The electricity costs about 100$ for a normal household.
Thus if people bribe police (which they do), and can get away for 2-3 years, then it's cost effective to do so.
You dont pay for 2 years, that is 2400$ saved and then pay a fine of 200$.
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I think they made the fine bigger by now, but many people did this here. I never did , plus I live in a rent so I cannot do it anyway, but many of the ex neighbors where I lived in the past did it, and got away with it.
I dont know in what country you live man, but there is big corruption in the world , that you cant even imagine.
That is crazy if you stole that much electricity in US it's hard to tell what you would get. It's technically a felony just from stolen electricity in value pretty quickly. We have meters that are pretty smart lately. Now they are using digital some cities send out the info of meter. I'm far enough away though they come and read my meter once a month.
I can't imagine getting away with just a fine. Definitely different cultures, which is part of what makes the board so intersting.
