Posts by Richard Newman23

Standard bank loans. Sometimes a broker can speed up the approval process—though if your financials are solid across the board, things move pretty quickly on their own nowadays—especially if they have an external partnership agreement with the bank.
The catch is that every single one of them will require you to take out a life insurance policy to cover the loan. To make matters worse, they usually push a much higher premium than what the bank actually requires.
Bottom line: you should research your options and go directly to the bank. You’ll end up saving quite a bit of money that way. Be careful, though; plenty of people promise they can clear your credit report or guarantee an approval. You spend all that time gathering documentation and submitting paperwork, only for the bank to run your file, reject the application, and leave you empty-handed. Not only have you wasted time and cash, but you're also flagged in their system, making it nearly impossible to get a loan from them in the future.
There are honest brokers out there, but they're hard to find...
What's making you consider going through them in the first place?

It’s a standard service agreement, which means they are legally obligated to provide standard power—specifically 60 Hz at 120V. I’m not the only one dealing with this; the entire neighborhood is suffering because the local substation is ancient and the transformer simply lacks the capacity. When we test the voltage at the outlet, it sits around 190V, which is well below any acceptable level. A normal deviation for a household should be within a tiny margin! Naturally, my local City Hall is washing its hands of the whole thing, claiming they can't do anything (basically just passing the buck). In the meantime, I’ve been leaning on some business partners to look into this, and I've managed to dig up quite a bit, though I could still use some help if anyone has leads. For anyone facing this same headache, here is the process I've been guided through by various engineers:
- First off, take a sedative... you'll need it. :-)
- Call an insurance company and get coverage for your home appliances (I'm actually looking into how that works right now—if anyone has advice, I’d appreciate it)
- Next, draft a formal petition citing your service agreement. This contract stipulates the guaranteed standard voltage that must be delivered to households according to law; it's the contract signed by Duke Energy, and they are technically required to honor it. *Be sure to include a threat of legal action)
- Then, hit your street door-to-door to collect signatures. It would be ideal if you could get a letter of support from the local government—though that part is usually where things stall, since officials tend to act like, "Who are you to ask us for help? Just handle it with them yourself." They'll often tell you to go deal with someone else, and even if they do agree to help, they might only move once their term is about to expire)
- Once you have enough signatures (at least 15), you should take them straight to Duke Energy. The issue is that I haven't figured out which specific department or individual is actually responsible—let alone finding a direct phone number or fax. PLEASE HELP IF ANYONE KNOWS WHERE TO DIRECT THIS!
- Once you track down the right person, start sending follow-up inquiries every single week.
- At that point, they are supposed to come out to the site, perform voltage measurements, and either replace the transformer with a higher-capacity unit or build a new substation. Well, that’s how it looks on paper, anyway. I'll keep everyone posted on how the actual practice goes.

Since I'm pretty new to these forums, I wanted to ask if anyone else is dealing with major voltage drops? It’s causing serious issues—my household appliances are acting up and my internet keeps cutting out... does anyone know how to actually get Exelon to upgrade the local transformer??
Please help, because all these repairs are absolutely killing my wallet, which isn't exactly overflowing right now.
Thanks