oh my god. please help.
wow, i may kill someone. the short version is this. i got my water bill today for the sum of $1,049.21.
yup, you read that right. of course right away i phone to find out what
the hell is going on. they tell me between july 14th when we took
posession of the house, and august 24 we consumed 460 m3 of water. the
next month we consumed 18m3 and the next month we consumed 22m3. the
previous owners since the water meter was installed in 2003 put on a
total of 443m3 of water (in over 2 years, a family of four). ok...a)i
don't fucking think so. b)if we consumed that much in JULY why did i
get billed for ~$120 that month, and the following two months and now
in OCTOBER get nailed to the cross with this bullshit? they tell me
that they thought the meter lady read it wrong so they sent her back
out for the next two months to make sure it really was that high, and
have now decided it should have been billed for july so they're
backcharging me ("which MISS sommerville we're entitled to do according
to our user terms of service and being that we're the only water
provider in the city we suggest you pay it before we send it to
collections"). ummmm...no. i argued with FOUR people, of which ONE has
half a brain, but is the lowest man on the totem pole. the "sr"
supervisor tells me to pay it or have no water and a messed up credit
rating. when i asked how it's even possible that i used that water i
was told this:
all in all it was a pretty frustrating 4 hours of conversations with my
cell phone and two cordless phones batteries' dying in the process.
when i asked why if our usage was so alarming that they'd send a person
2 more times to make sure it was that high, and THEN decide "wow, it
was really that high, let's backbill her", instead of picking up the
phone and/or typing a message on the bill saying 'wow...there's
something bizarre going on here'. instead of charging me a reasonable
estimated amount for three months and then dropping a $1,050 bill in my
lap and wondering why i'm upset. as a desperate plea i asked all four
of the idiots i talked to "you mean to tell me in all honesty that you
can say that if you had been paying your bill like a good girl/boy, and
out of nowhere came a totally impossible and unreasonable bill falls
into your lap, and noone can begin to explain it, you'd just say
"well...it was an actual meter reading so i guess it's just a
mystery?!" and pay it?" all but the low man on the totem pole said "yes
Miss sommerville, i would". i call bullshit.
here's the plan. tomarow morning i'm going to phone them again and go
over the numbers with them again. i'm going to explain to them that
ryan did the math and that to consume that much water in that much time
we'd have had to run the 6 litres of water a minute, every minute of
every hour of every day for 5 weeks straight. AND that our drainage
pipes are incapable of draining that kind of water and we'd have
flooded our entire neighborhood in less than a week. i'm then going to
ask them if they think that sounds reasonable or plausable. if they
think i should chalk it up to a bizarre mystery, i'm going to go to my
mom's law firm, ask one of the lawyers to do a public pro bono case, go
to the MP, go to the media and waltz into downtown's head office with
my crew and see if i still owe $1,050. and i'm pretty sure if other
citizens of edmonton think it's possible for this to happen to
them....there's gonna be some explaining to do, especially with
christmas coming and power/gas prices on the rise through -guess
who-the same company. they're total nazis. i will win this war. I WILL
WIN THIS WAR.
input? comments? advice? *gathers troops for an ass kicking from hell
yup, you read that right. of course right away i phone to find out what
the hell is going on. they tell me between july 14th when we took
posession of the house, and august 24 we consumed 460 m3 of water. the
next month we consumed 18m3 and the next month we consumed 22m3. the
previous owners since the water meter was installed in 2003 put on a
total of 443m3 of water (in over 2 years, a family of four). ok...a)i
don't fucking think so. b)if we consumed that much in JULY why did i
get billed for ~$120 that month, and the following two months and now
in OCTOBER get nailed to the cross with this bullshit? they tell me
that they thought the meter lady read it wrong so they sent her back
out for the next two months to make sure it really was that high, and
have now decided it should have been billed for july so they're
backcharging me ("which MISS sommerville we're entitled to do according
to our user terms of service and being that we're the only water
provider in the city we suggest you pay it before we send it to
collections"). ummmm...no. i argued with FOUR people, of which ONE has
half a brain, but is the lowest man on the totem pole. the "sr"
supervisor tells me to pay it or have no water and a messed up credit
rating. when i asked how it's even possible that i used that water i
was told this:
- you have a swimming pool (which doesn't make sense anyhow because
it'd have to be an olympic sized pool at least, and if that was the
case, they shouldn't be charging me $480 for the water "disposal"
because it wouldn't have been disposed, it'd be still sitting in my
460m3 pool, which wouldn't//couldn't physically fit on our property) - you had a major water leak and got a plumber to come fix it
(except with 6 water tank trucks worth of water, i'm pretty sure mine
and my neighbor's houses would be a bit wet and there'd be evidence of
a flood that size) - i'm just a "water hog" that uses according to the service representitive the equivalent of a 100 head cattle rance in a month
- there's just some bizarre mystery
as to why our water is literally evaporating out of our tank at an
alarming rate but that's just the way luck goes sometimes - that i shouldn't be so selfish and pay for the water i've obviously consumed because that's the fair thing to do
- that they would not consider replacing the water meter, they
would consider inspecting the meter but because it's been reading
"approprietly" at ~20m3/month since then they can "assure" me it's
working fine, and when that is deemed i will have to pay THEM for the service call that they made to determine it was working just fine - that no matter which way i roll the dice, that amount of water
was consumed by us, and has to be paid for. and perhaps i should "start
to watch my outside faucet in case my neighbors are sneaking over and
tapping in to it at night"
all in all it was a pretty frustrating 4 hours of conversations with my
cell phone and two cordless phones batteries' dying in the process.
when i asked why if our usage was so alarming that they'd send a person
2 more times to make sure it was that high, and THEN decide "wow, it
was really that high, let's backbill her", instead of picking up the
phone and/or typing a message on the bill saying 'wow...there's
something bizarre going on here'. instead of charging me a reasonable
estimated amount for three months and then dropping a $1,050 bill in my
lap and wondering why i'm upset. as a desperate plea i asked all four
of the idiots i talked to "you mean to tell me in all honesty that you
can say that if you had been paying your bill like a good girl/boy, and
out of nowhere came a totally impossible and unreasonable bill falls
into your lap, and noone can begin to explain it, you'd just say
"well...it was an actual meter reading so i guess it's just a
mystery?!" and pay it?" all but the low man on the totem pole said "yes
Miss sommerville, i would". i call bullshit.
here's the plan. tomarow morning i'm going to phone them again and go
over the numbers with them again. i'm going to explain to them that
ryan did the math and that to consume that much water in that much time
we'd have had to run the 6 litres of water a minute, every minute of
every hour of every day for 5 weeks straight. AND that our drainage
pipes are incapable of draining that kind of water and we'd have
flooded our entire neighborhood in less than a week. i'm then going to
ask them if they think that sounds reasonable or plausable. if they
think i should chalk it up to a bizarre mystery, i'm going to go to my
mom's law firm, ask one of the lawyers to do a public pro bono case, go
to the MP, go to the media and waltz into downtown's head office with
my crew and see if i still owe $1,050. and i'm pretty sure if other
citizens of edmonton think it's possible for this to happen to
them....there's gonna be some explaining to do, especially with
christmas coming and power/gas prices on the rise through -guess
who-the same company. they're total nazis. i will win this war. I WILL
WIN THIS WAR.
input? comments? advice? *gathers troops for an ass kicking from hell