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Apparently, a lot.
In September, we had to get a new electricity meter put on our house. The company sent out a repair person to make the switch. He even went above what's required, and knocked to let us know to turn off any computers before he did the switch - very nice, easy, and we're happy as clams, right?
Yeah. Well, we're happy with the new meter, at least.
A week later, squarely between billing dates, we got a bill for about three times our normal amount (we're on the plan that's the same every month, regardless of actual usage). Quick call to the company, and we find out the repair person accidentally hit a button to close out our account, and fixed it by opening a brand-new account with the same details. Unfortunately, this means that the electricity our air conditioner uses in summer, that we pay in winter, was billed immediately. They told us to pay our regular amount on the regular due date, and go on with life. So come October, that's what we did. Kind of a big oops, but they made it right, so we were again happy.
November's bill came, with an amount owed as zero. Big WTF moment there since October was something like 10 degrees above average, we ran the a/c practically around the clock, and I added to our collection of electrical geekery. But we called, and they assured us it was correct, that the old, defective meter was gobbling so much power that we had actually overpaid all this time.
We didn't trust this, and squirreled away our regular payment in savings - a move that pretty much saved us in December, when the bill again claimed we had to pay zero. After a two hour call with billing, they finally figured out that when the repairman, who is not trained on billing/account stuff, closed and reopened our account, he accidentally set our monthly payment to zero, instead of it being roughly 1/12th of our yearly usage. And even though we technically owed zero, our "actual debit" was going up - and it was going to re-figure in January based on the wrong information, causing our monthly payment to skyrocket until the math was re-figured again in January 2013. Good thing we didn't believe them in November! So we paid Nov/Dec right on the spot, and were reassured that our monthly payment was back to its pre-September goodness.
So today, the January bill became available online. It's way more than it should be. Why, you ask? Because the moron last month, after a two-hour call, "fixed" our account by taking us off the equal-payment plan, and then manually setting Dec's bill from zero to twice what our normal monthly payment should have been. So the Jan bill contains our use from the billing cycle, plus the remaining excess from last summer. At first, the rep this time almost just reset it manually to what we are supposed to owe, without looking into why our bill was wrong again. Apparently the electric company's bills are mere suggestions, and lousy suggestions at that.
And so far, the husband has been on hold for 17 minutes, while today's rep struggles to get the computer to get us back on the equal-payments plan. We have no idea why it's taking so long to undo the mistake... it took, like, two seconds to set us up with it back in 2006 when we moved in here.
At this point, I'm going to find out what it'll take to close out the husband's account, and set up a fresh one in my name, since I have lost all confidence in their ability to bill our current account correctly. Our next house will definitely not be in this company's service area -- I hope it's not even in this state, actually! And NOW the rep is saying that they fixed our bill, and we don't owe anything at this time. Guess we'll save the payment again, and see what happens.
Bonus not-suck! The library just emailed. My new card number wasn't working for the digital checkouts on my home computer. Took me all of one "am I doing it wrong?" email and they fixed it -- for real! I think I'll check out a book on solar panel installation....
In September, we had to get a new electricity meter put on our house. The company sent out a repair person to make the switch. He even went above what's required, and knocked to let us know to turn off any computers before he did the switch - very nice, easy, and we're happy as clams, right?
Yeah. Well, we're happy with the new meter, at least.
A week later, squarely between billing dates, we got a bill for about three times our normal amount (we're on the plan that's the same every month, regardless of actual usage). Quick call to the company, and we find out the repair person accidentally hit a button to close out our account, and fixed it by opening a brand-new account with the same details. Unfortunately, this means that the electricity our air conditioner uses in summer, that we pay in winter, was billed immediately. They told us to pay our regular amount on the regular due date, and go on with life. So come October, that's what we did. Kind of a big oops, but they made it right, so we were again happy.
November's bill came, with an amount owed as zero. Big WTF moment there since October was something like 10 degrees above average, we ran the a/c practically around the clock, and I added to our collection of electrical geekery. But we called, and they assured us it was correct, that the old, defective meter was gobbling so much power that we had actually overpaid all this time.
We didn't trust this, and squirreled away our regular payment in savings - a move that pretty much saved us in December, when the bill again claimed we had to pay zero. After a two hour call with billing, they finally figured out that when the repairman, who is not trained on billing/account stuff, closed and reopened our account, he accidentally set our monthly payment to zero, instead of it being roughly 1/12th of our yearly usage. And even though we technically owed zero, our "actual debit" was going up - and it was going to re-figure in January based on the wrong information, causing our monthly payment to skyrocket until the math was re-figured again in January 2013. Good thing we didn't believe them in November! So we paid Nov/Dec right on the spot, and were reassured that our monthly payment was back to its pre-September goodness.
So today, the January bill became available online. It's way more than it should be. Why, you ask? Because the moron last month, after a two-hour call, "fixed" our account by taking us off the equal-payment plan, and then manually setting Dec's bill from zero to twice what our normal monthly payment should have been. So the Jan bill contains our use from the billing cycle, plus the remaining excess from last summer. At first, the rep this time almost just reset it manually to what we are supposed to owe, without looking into why our bill was wrong again. Apparently the electric company's bills are mere suggestions, and lousy suggestions at that.
And so far, the husband has been on hold for 17 minutes, while today's rep struggles to get the computer to get us back on the equal-payments plan. We have no idea why it's taking so long to undo the mistake... it took, like, two seconds to set us up with it back in 2006 when we moved in here.
At this point, I'm going to find out what it'll take to close out the husband's account, and set up a fresh one in my name, since I have lost all confidence in their ability to bill our current account correctly. Our next house will definitely not be in this company's service area -- I hope it's not even in this state, actually! And NOW the rep is saying that they fixed our bill, and we don't owe anything at this time. Guess we'll save the payment again, and see what happens.
Bonus not-suck! The library just emailed. My new card number wasn't working for the digital checkouts on my home computer. Took me all of one "am I doing it wrong?" email and they fixed it -- for real! I think I'll check out a book on solar panel installation....
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