Today’s “More Power to You” is brought to you by the number 500,000, the number 2 and the number 500.

Ok, now that I’ve finished channeling the spirit of Jim Henson, I’ll explain. If you pay your NextLight bill with a credit card or debit card, all three of those numbers are important to you – and they might even be enough of a reason to switch your payment method to an ACH direct withdrawal. Taking it from the top:

• $500,000 is how much NextLight will pay this year in credit card processing fees. That figure has been growing rapidly as the card companies continue to raise their rates. NextLight, by contrast, has never raised its monthly rates in our seven-year history, and we don’t plan to start now … but half a million bucks is a lot for anybody to swallow. Especially since that half-million could be going to providing better and better service to more and more people instead.
• Which brings us to the $2 figure. That’s what we’ll be charging for credit and debit card payments starting Dec. 15 in order to offset those processing fees. Avoiding that charge is easy – just go to your online customer portal or call our customer service team at 303-774-4494 and switch your payment method to ACH, which has NO fees. You’ll save two bucks … and if you do it promptly, you might get a nice surprise.
• That’s because you could win $500 of NextLight service if you turn on automatic ACH payments for your NextLight account by Nov. 30. That’s right, we’re having a drawing! After Nov. 30, we’ll randomly draw nine winners: five will win $100 of NextLight service, three will win $200 of NextLight service, and one will win that big $500 service prize. (Postcard entries are also accepted; see the PDF of our contest rules for details.)Both residential and commercial customers are eligible, so make the change – you just might win some BIG savings!

Switching to ACH helps you. It helps us. And it just might help you to some free service for a while. So why not go ahead?

After all, it all adds up.