We got pretty passionate about the Pink Shirt Day anti-bullying campaign and ran all sorts of promotions to help raise awareness, including a Facebook competition where our friends were encouraged to upload photos of their “pink bits”.

Thanks for your contributions – prizes are in the post!

And of course we dutifully turned up to work in our pink shirts (and slippers, knickers, hats… you name it) on Friday and topped off the campaigning with a Pink Morning Tea.

But whilst we were eating Pink Velvet Cupcakes and drinking Strawberry Milk, some of our developers were across town at the Victoria University ICT Fair.

Armed with a pie warmer, they were up there looking for developers to join our Rails team. We’re recruiting for summer projects and full time work from November 2013, so if you’re interested, email devteamjobs@powershop.co.nz and tell us what you’re into!

Our existing developers sell us much better than I do:

“Powershop have the best Rails developers in New Zealand. It’s a very casual, relaxing environment and has a no-holds bar attitude to their advertising which I resonate with. All in all, it’s a nice environment to code, learn, and grow as a software engineer.” – Alex, Developer

“Good team, good processes (code review, source control, continuous integration), profitable company, relaxed environment, good beer, pool table.” – Ben, Developer

And quote of the day:

“I like the CTO, he’s great.” – Brian, CTO

And finally, we decided the business sales team had earned their keep and so we rewarded the boys with a Dart Board. It took most of Friday night before someone finally hit the target, but we got there in the end.

Next month we’re getting behind the Mary Potter Hospice for the $100 challenge.

We’re currently brainstorming ideas on how we can raise more than the $180 we raised in office last year, so stay tuned!

So we’re running a competition.

Upload a picture* of your “pink bits” (anything pink, except the ones you’re thinking of!) to our Facebook page by midnight on Friday 17th May and you’ll go in the draw to win a t-shirt. We’ve got a few Amnesty International “fighting the bad guys t-shirts” that we created with the help of Starfish, and a few good ol’ Powershop Mr Winky t-shirts to giveaway.

We’ll draw 20 winning names out of a hat and endeavour to contact the winners, via Facebook, by close of business on Tuesday 21st May. We’ll also publish the winners’ names on our blog.

What to do?

1. Check out our Pinterest board for some inspiration on all things PINK: http://pshp.co/YXaliM

2. Upload a picture of your pink bits to our Facebook wall by midnight Friday 17th May: https://www.facebook.com/powershop

3. Share it with your friends and family and encourage them to show us their pink bits. The more allies the better!

Good luck! We can’t wait to see your pink bits.

A few terms and conditions: The prizes are not transferable and can’t be exchanged for cash. If you’re a winner and you don’t claim your prize within one month of us posting winners’ names on Facebook, then  you’ll forfeit your t-shirt.

We’ll do our best to give everyone a choice in which t-shirt they receive, but due to limited size availability this may not always be possible.

*If you post anything you wouldn’t want your mother to see, chances are high we’ll take it down. Both Powershop and Pink Shirt Day reserve the right to use prize winners’ names and/or pink bits pictures for publicity purposes.

If it all goes horribly wrong in ways we don’t expect from an intended bit of light-hearted entertainment we reserve the right to amend or cease running this competition at any time by notice on Facebook.

Everyone at Powershop has a little pink book on their desk, which is all about how Powershop is
abnormal and bizarre, and sometimes criticised by the mainstream for unorthodox beliefs.

About how we’ll always stand up to the bullies and fight the bad guys, because we believe you can’t
be betterer without being different.

Just like our posters, with Kim Jong-il frying up a sausage at a school gala, and Saddam Hussein
collecting money for Refugee Aid, the book is aptly titled “Same Power Different Attitude”.

With that slogan close to our hearts, and our bright pink colour scheme, we have more than a little
in common with the folks behind Pink Shirt Day.

For those who don’t know, Pink Shirt Day is a national campaign aimed to raise awareness about
the power to prevent bullying. Pink Shirt Day aims to reduce bullying by celebrating diversity and
promoting the development of positive social relationships. An annual event celebrated throughout
New Zealand and the world, Pink Shirt Day aims to create a New Zealand where all people feel safe,
valued and respected.

The event began in Nova Scotia, Canada, in 2007, when a group of students stood up to defend a kid
who was bullied because he was wearing a pink shirt. The students took a stand by all wearing pink
shirts to show solidarity, and handing out pink shirts to their classmates.

This year’s Pink Shirt Day is Friday May 17, and we plan to raise awareness and share our no-
nonsense approach to bullying with a few promotions over the coming few days, so keep your eyes
peeled.

If you want to chuck a few posters up in your community in the meantime, you can find the printable
versions here: http://www.pinkshirtday.org.nz/getinvolved

Make sure you show your support for the campaign by “liking” their Facebook page: https://
www.facebook.com/PinkShirtDayAotearoa?fref=ts

And don’t forget to wear your pink shirts on Friday!

So, we’ve given our website a makeover and made it betterer.

The new site will allow for better viewing on mobile devices and it now has a responsive design, which means it works regardless of your screen size and orientation.

We’ve opted for a clean and simple look – a stripped-back homepage that tells you exactly what Powershop is about, a “toolkit” that explains how easy it is to manage your power account, and a cost comparisons page with an overview of our pricing model.

If you’re already a Powershop customer you’ll be able to show your mates all the good stuff Powershop can do for them just by sending them there <link>.

And if you aren’t a Powershop customer you should be – have a click around <link>.

And if you’re looking for the login button, it’s still on the top right of the homepage, and everything in the secure site still looks exactly the same.

Today, we’re celebrating our 50,000^th customer.

Thanks for helping us achieve so much, in such a short time.

In the next little while you’ll see some changes to Powershop, changes that we’ve made from all the things we’ve learned from those first 50,000 customers. You’ll see a new website, improved Labs tools, a new mobile app, and changes to how we engage with our customers on social networks.

We’ve celebrated here in the office with some sausage rolls and good NZ craft beer, and now we want to celebrate with you. Since sausage rolls don’t travel well by post, we’re giving away some $50 account credits instead.

We’ve hidden this party winky in our social media channels (Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube) alongside tidbits of Powershop history from this timeline:

Use the dates in the timeline, and the written clues that you find along the way to solve each puzzle, and the first 50 to reach the end of the Winky trail will win some prizes! We’ll contact the winners individually and we’ll publish the names on our blog.

Don’t forget to have a browse around our social media channels as you reach them… you might just find some spot prizes (Same Power Different Attitude posters, and Powershop winky t-shirts) while you’re there.

Here’s to those first 50,000 – who’ve bought 1,390,548 products from our online store, become one of our 22,000 Facebook friends and who’ve given us the 95% customer service rating on powerswitch.co.nz.

And here’s to the next 50,000 – we’ve only just begun!

Update:

Thanks to everyone who took part in our treasure hunt!

The names of the 50 winners are below – you’ll receive the account credit by the end of the week.

Sorry to all of those you missed out – make sure you follow us on all of the social channels you visited to keep an eye out for more competitions in the future.

And because we love bringing you prizes, there’s still a few t-shirts and Same Power Different Attitude posters up for grabs. They’re floating around out in there in our socialsphere – all you need to do is find ‘em

Fifty Winners:

On Friday, the Powershop crew swapped their winky t-shirts for windbreakers and wellies and headed for the West Wind Farm in Makara.

We were keen to learn more about this type of renewable energy, and were hoping we might get the chance to climb the inside of a turbine.

Thanks to two of the farm’s wonderfully intelligent gurus (who go by the names of Tim and Mike), we got what we came for.

First, Mike gave us a look-in behind the scenes at the office and demonstrated just how much work went into the installation of the turbines (these things weigh around 22 tonnes each!).

West Wind’s first 15 turbines were switched on by Prime Minister John Key in April 2009, and all 62 turbines were in operation by the end of the year.

The strong winds that Wellingtonians love to hate mean that this farm often generates at 45%, well above the international average of 24%, and West Wind is hailed as one of the best performing wind farms in the world.

West Wind generates enough electricity to power around 70,000 NZ homes – or, all of Wellington. Not bad for a widdle bit of environmentally-friendly wind!

Secondly, we toured the West Wind Recreation Area, which provides access to the coastline, the wind farm, the World War II gun emplacements and Fort Opau.

The turbines themselves are a short walk from the recreation area. Situated on coastal farmland with views of rolling green hills, the Cook Straight and Kaikoura, the site is incredibly beautiful. Ongoing developments in reducing the noise levels of the turbines (understandably a main concern for local residents), means the farm now only has a faint swishing noise, similar to that of the ocean. It’s all rather serene.

Finally, Tim kindly opened up one of the turbine towers and took us, in turns, up a short ladder onto the first platform. This was the view that greeted us from above:

The Siemens 2.3 megawatt wind turbines stand 111 metres tall. The towers are 67 metres high, and the blades are 40 metres long.

I’m not one who usually suffers from vertigo, but it was a dizzying sight.

We didn’t go any higher than the first platform, but right at the very top of that long ladder is the “Hub” and “Nacelle” of the turbine, which is where all the magic happens.

On our way out we asked if we could paint a turbine in Powershop’s signature bright pink. The final lesson we learned is that wind turbines do not feature any branding, for aesthetic reasons, and so we had to settle for a Powershop winky sticker on a display turbine instead (it will probably be removed after they read this post!).

West Wind is open to the public and if you’re interested in checking it out for yourself, you can find more information here.

Thousands of people are missing out on lower electricity bills after locking themselves into fixed-term contracts.

The contracts are in the spotlight because the Commerce Commission has forced lines company Vector to drop its charges by an average of 9 per cent , delivering lower bills to many Aucklanders and Northlanders.

However, customers of most large retailers on fixed-price contracts will not benefit until their contracts expire.

Just how many people will miss out on Vector savings is difficult to estimate as the lines company didn’t have to spread the savings equally. Some households, especially low power users, would have paid up to 1.2 per cent more in higher lines fees. But the average effect of the commission’s order was lower bills.

Fixed contracts are hurting consumers who signed up on the assumption power prices would keep soaring.

For some high power users the deal has turned out so much more expensive they would be better off paying a $150 break fee, Consumer NZ has calculated.

Consumer NZ looked at bills for one central Auckland customer with high power use and calculated his three-year fixed price contract from Mercury had cost him $390 above standard rates.

Fixed-price deals often charge a premium early on and feature expensive break fees, though some also offer discounts, for example higher prompt payment bonuses.

None of the big four retailers will disclose how many Vector customers they have on fixed-term contracts. But it is likely to be several thousand.

Meridian, which at its last annual report had more than 100,000 North Island customers, has 58 per cent of customers in the Vector area on fixed prices. Mercury has 80,000 on fixed contracts nationwide. Contact refused to reveal any fixed-term figures, while Genesis said it had “several thousand” Aucklanders on fixed-term contracts expiring in December.

Fixed terms provide certainty against residential electricity prices, which until recently were climbing relentlessly.

But now the energy component of power bills – the other main cost apart from lines fees – is tipped to flatten or rise more slowly.

Ari Sargent, CEO of Powershop, says other retailers engaged in “scaremongering” to sign consumers up.

“Certainly from a wholesale market perspective the signs were there from post-2008 that the economy was slowing, demand was softening and there were a number of [electricity] plants coming on stream. Two to three years ago prices were rising quite sharply, but I think retailers would have known that that was likely to soften and probably deceived a lot of customers into thinking they would continue to increase the same way.”

Mercury’s three-year contract, offered in 2010, committed users to an immediate 9 per cent price hike, Consumer calculated. Mercury’s 2010 letter to customers read: “It feels like the cost of living never stop rising. Over the past three years the average power bill in Auckland has gone up from $1636 a year to $1940. We believe this rising trend is set to continue.”

Mercury declined to respond to Sargent’s criticism.

But Electricity Authority chief executive Carl Hansen said industry players could not have been expected to foresee Vector’s price drops.

Consumer chief Sue Chetwin said fixing suited some people but bill payers should take extra care, especially now that prices rises looked like they may ease.

“You already have people saying that if Rio Tinto isn’t able to reach an agreement with Meridian there is going to be a heck of a lot of excess electricity available.”

Sargent predicted prices would flatten regardless of what happened at Rio Tinto’s Tiwai aluminium smelter. “Transpower’s [national grid upgrade] increases are almost through the pipeline so you’d expect some more increases in that next 12-14 months but not as big as they have been.”

Chetwin said it was worth shopping around even if consumers had fixed their contracts. Using its comparison site Powerswitch.org.nz, Consumer found the Auckland customer electricity plans that would save him more than the $150 early termination fee he would pay to ditch Mercury. The man was a high user, spending $4520 a year on electricity and gas, so his potential savings were bigger than most people’s.

Mercury has offered its fixed-termers an extra year on the contract to alleviate missing out on Vector’s price drop. But Consumer concluded that for the customer in the case study, the offer probably wasn’t worth it.

“After three years, we calculate he’ll have already paid $390 above standard rates. It’s a big gamble to assume he’ll recoup this in year four,” it said in a blog post.

Hansen said fixed terms were valuable for retailers, so signing up was a good chance to negotiate a better price.

“If a retailer is offering you a two or three-year contract, that is a great time to seek significant savings because they know that if they get you they have got you for two to three years.”

Powershop, which encourages customers to shop around for energy deals, is owned by Meridian Energy and does not offer fixed terms. Mercury Energy is owned by Mighty River Power.

By Eloise Gibson on stuff.co.nz

There’s not much we can do about the first two, but at Powershop we’re committed to helping you keep your power costs as low as possible.

Last year we built Powershop Labs, an online tool to help customers understand their prices, and help monitor their power usage more closely. And today we’ve rolled it out for all customers, just in time for winter. When you log in to your account you’ll now see a “Labs” tab next to “My Account”.

At this time of year, as the temperature drops and the daylight hours get fewer, it is helpful to enter your own meter reading every week or so (or if you have a smart meter, just log in to your Powershop account).

Use the “Usage” lab to track your usage since you became a Powershop customer. Is your usage starting to increase yet? Has your usage reduced since you became a Powershop customer?

This is the first step in reducing your power usage and cost; to understand it. Understanding your power usage will help you take action to reduce it, before it’s too late. It will also help you budget for those higher winter bills.

If you’ve got an Arc or AMS smart meter (Metrix coming soon) at your house you’ll be able to use our “Usage patterns” lab to see exactly when you use your power; how much and at what time of the day.

You’ll be able to spot trends in your usage and might help you kill off a few power vampires!

And finally, if you want see how your prices are made up – how much relates to fixed costs, or the difference between day and night rates (if you are on a day/night tariff) etc. check out our “Prices explained” tool.

We hope you find Labs useful and the tools help you to keep your power costs under control this winter.

Be sure to leave us feedback on how we can make labs even better.

The fault, which was found by the Electricity and Gas Complaints Commission,  is specific to the Enermet K320 Meters, and only affects some of those that were manufactured between 1989 and 1993. The fault causes the meter to clock up excessive units under light conditions, effectively over-recording the customers’ consumption. The failure is caused by a capacitor in the low load measuring circuit of the meter.

We talked to our meter companies and found that just four Enermet K320 Meters are in usage across our current customer database. None of those four meters are registered with residential customers, and it appears that none of those four meters are affected by the failure, as they were all manufactured after 1993. However, we’re in the process of testing and replacing these meters – just to be sure.

We are confident that none of our other customers are affected by this fault, but, if you have any questions about the Fair Go article, or have any concerns about your meter, it’s best to send us an email so we can quickly resolve the matter for you:http://www.powershop.co.nz/contact-us.html

Or, alternatively, you can get in touch with the Electricity and Gas Complaints Commission: http://www.egcomplaints.co.nz/complaints/make-a-complaint.aspx