when it rains...

[jay]

I'm just back up.... at home. After I arrived home earlier, Kevin was accompanied by a power company guy. Who handed me a "how to reconnect service" tag, and then disconnected our electric service for non-payment. Three hours and $700 later, we're back up. Sigh.

The 48-hour disconnect notice had been mailed and arrived last week, while I was in Houston. It was still sitting in a pile of unopened mail from last week, sandwiched between real estate flyers and credit card offers.

I'm on the road a lot, and patgreene hates dealing with bills or finances, so I set up automatic payments for all utilities and payments. In this case, winter bills had been higher than my automatic payment amounts for several months, a balance had accumulated, and no one saw the disconnection notice until it was too late.

Now we'll have to post a deposit, as well... (shakes head).

Back to work, now that the house is back running.

Comments

[tenacious-snail.livejournal.com]

I'm glad the power is back on. You've had quite a week!

[who-is-she.livejournal.com]

you know, it seems to me that since you had your bill on auto-pay, .... it was wrong of them to cancel you. I mean, in setting up auto pay you have made a good faith effort to have the bill paid regularly. There just seems something about that that's really cold hearted, and unfair.

still, that's the world, I guess.

if only they'd sent you an EMAIL about nonpayment.. you'd have known, right.
:)
heh. that's how it is at my house, too.

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

(nods) I need email notifications... paper mail has too much spam, and gets misplaced.

[dawnd.livejournal.com]

*sigh* That really sucks, man.

who_is_she has a point though--maybe you should find out if it's possible to get such notices e-mailed to you. That would undoubtedly work a LOT better.

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

(hug) thanks, dear.

I'm going to check out whether I can get electronic billing. And complain about having made regular payments, to try to avoid a deposit.

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

Crud, we've had that happen a couple of times. :/

[p3aches.livejournal.com]

700.00 oh my god. did you under estimate the bill or over use the electricity/? Still Who is she has a point . Auto payments is a good faith effort. hugs t

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

I had a $220/mo flat payment set up... average monthly last year was $200, so it was OK. But this winter, high natural gas prices drove our bill up to the $300-350 level for several months, and we built up a balance unknowingly.