i love the helpful file photos

Yee ha!

Nobody is sure who has read this article about Daniel's electric bill, but it seems to take seven years if you try.

"Moris said he's been paying the bill for seven years."
how do you not figure that out?

Blah, the idiot should have figured it out years ago.

It's amusing how the IE titlebar shows "Minnesota's Breaking News..." and they run lame "news" stories like this constantly. Yes, a man paying the wrong bill for 7 years certainly is breaking news!

Note: I'm not biatching that this is on Fark. I'm fully away that this is Not News.

If this happened to me I'd probably never figure it out.

My bill is usually about $75. One month it jumped to $1,500. I called right away, I wasn't going to pay that much! They found the problem, and sent me a corrected bill.

My point is, if he'd been doing this for seven years, he should have called six years, 11 months ago.

IT WAS MINE!!!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

"Lights on, lights off, Daniel-san."

/RIP Pat

It pays to pay attention to your power bill. Xcel is not evil about these things, you know. I paid zero for electricity for about 18 months when I moved into a certain property because their electric meter was dead. They finally figured it out on an upgrade to remote-readable metering equipment, and they did not back bill me one cent.

If Daniel gets three years overbilling refunded, he should consider himself lucky. Xcel is being generous when they don't have to be.

Hey Daniel!

You may want to look into those weekly business lunches your wife has been going on for the last 7 years, too.

You can thank me later.

I once received a natural gas bill for about 230 dollars. (My usual monthly was maybe 25 bucks, tops). I called and questioned the bill, and the company rep very politely said not to pay it, that they would look into it, and send me a corrected bill.

The next week I recieved an adjusted bill for three thousand dollars.*

Don't fark with the utility companies!


*(They did fix it finally. I owed them twelve dollars.)

"I think the last bill was $173," Moris said.

"I'm out at least 15, maybe 2-grand, maybe more," Moris said.

So they paid him back 3 years worth of electric bills as restitution? @175/month that is $6300.

He nearly ended up with a $100/month electric bill for 7 years after the rebate. If he used more than $100/month he got lucky. I'd say he did okay considering he did use some electricity over those seven years.

My point is, if he'd been doing this for seven years, he should have called six years, 11 months ago.

Frog, meet Pot.

what about the guy who's bill he was paying? If the electric company suddenly billed me for a years worth of undercharging me, I'd be even more pissed off.

The city did this to me on my taxes. They never sent me a bill, so I never paid. Then when they billed me, it included a few months of late charges.

Somehow, the city's logic of "you knew taxes were due, should have asked us what you owed and by when" won over my logic of "that's not how it works, people who want payment usually ask for it".

I read my own meter whenever my bill changes by more than $10 month-to-month. It's pretty easy to check whether the reading on the bill is yours or not, electric meters read just like odometers.

What I can't explain, however, is why my bill at my old house was $70/mo and my new house is $28/mo, except that my water heater is now gas. The house is 2x the size, I now have central a/c, and I took all my appliances with my. I guess PGE was charging higher rates.

OMG MR. MIYAGI IS DEAD! are you screwing with me.

*gets her news from Fark
**damn Thanksgiving interrupting my Farking
***not a huge fan but still, RIP

Electric bill confusion? Sign me up, I have a SPARC cluster I could give a whirl.

KJUW89, it is easy to notice when your bill jumps from reasonable to unreasonable but much harder to call the electric company on their mistake when the numbers are about what you think they should be. If someone gets a bill for $90 and it shows up as $110 most people wouldn't go to the trouble of double checking the electric company. Now if it jumps from $90 to $270, then sure, go out there and read the meter.

Happened to me once. I get a $90 electric bill and I go read the meter. Sure enough, they read the 1000s column wrong. I call in. They say, "The bill is for $92, what's the problem". "Oh, it's just that my bill is usually $14 and you read the meter wrong". Now if they tried to charge me $18 or even $20 I probably would have never checked. Then again if it is a question of reading the meter wrong (why arent the things digital?) then it should come out in the wash next month even if you let it go.

What I can't explain, however, is why my bill at my old house was $70/mo and my new house is $28/mo, except that my water heater is now gas. The house is 2x the size, I now have central a/c, and I took all my appliances with my. I guess PGE was charging higher rates.

*goes in the corner and cries over his $225/mo electric bills

I would recommend less real electricity and more instant outlets.



They work like a champ. Compliments of the quasi-genius, Rob Cockerham.

"We fixed the glitch"

My name is Daniel. creepy. maybe he's been paying my bill. That would rule.

so who has been paying his bill? his power has obviously been on the last seven years.

Loki009, I'm right there with you. I was getting $14-$18 electric bills when I lived in a one room studio with free gas heat. Now that I'm in a house I'm lucky to keep it under $175 in the winter. Stupid heat pumps.

The city did this to me on my taxes. They never sent me a bill, so I never paid. Then when they billed me, it included a few months of late charges.

The IRS does this. You pay a penalty if you didn't pay enough in during the course of the year. Funny thing though... I have never gotten a bonus/penalty in my favor for when my refund is 3 times the amount they set as a minimum before you pay their penalty. The best thing you can do is work it out such that you end up cutting the IRS a check for a few dollars each year.

Hockeygod- they tried pulling that shiat on my brother for a rental property he has. The bank had the bill (recently purchased house, long story) for the city taxes and sat on it for 11.5 months. They tried to tag him with the original amount + late charges. He told em what to do to themselves and surprisingly enough, the bank admitted their error and he did not have to pay any late fees whatsoever.

the city's logic of "you knew taxes were due, should have asked us what you owed and by when" won over my logic of "that's not how it works, people who want payment usually ask for it".

Today's Life Lesson: If it involves you paying money to a government, there are probably laws ensuring that the government will get to take (or keep) as much of your money as possible.

Oh yeah dude should have realized that he was paying someone else's electricity bill month 1. Otherwise, it leads ME to believe that it wasn't much that he was paying, so he kept paying it cause it was lower than he thought or on track with what he was expecting.

Just in case you didn't know EDDIE GUERRERO is dead too.

*I didn't know either
**I seem to follow little know celebrities
*** not really though

He's not really out as much as he thinks. He was using the power for the full seven years, so he would have had some sort of power bill, anyway. Granted, the bill he was actually paying for might have been higher than what his would have been, but he's only out the difference between what he paid and what his own power bills would have been. I'd say he's not entitled to a refund of all his payments for those 7 years, that would mean he got his power absolutely free.

He's probably out of luck legally, depending on any statutes of limitations.

I pay over $100/mo I would love to have a $28/mo bill.

Electric/Gas bill = $400/month. I gotta go cut some lights off and close the 'fridge.

therealburkazoid


so who has been paying his bill? his power has obviously been on the last seven years.

Exactly what I was thinking. And how can they not figure out whose bill he has been paying? And he's getting three years back, but what about the electricity he used during those three years?

Poorly, poorly researched story.

*goes in the corner and cries over his $225/mo electric bills

Right there with ya Loki009 . Jeepers, for $17 a month, one of the kids couldn't even leave a TV on 24/7.

Epsilon: I assume he was compensated for how much he overpaid, not a complete refund. He probably received about $1500 for the 3 years and is applying that estimate to the prior 4.

Right there with ya Loki009 . Jeepers, for $17 a month, one of the kids couldn't even leave a TV on 24/7.

well my problem is the computers, i have a DCHP/Firewall server, Share server, and Audio/Video server that are all on 24/7 which is killing my electric bill, plus my roommates pc's which often are on a good portion of the day as well

Only 3 Years huh? I remember when the Casino lost money a few weeks ago do to a stupid error, there were people backing the casino because if you were honest, you wouldn't steal.

This is just another reason why people feel it's okay to get away with things to businesses. Businesses can be as dishonest as most people, yet have the law on their side when they want to get away with something.

Been living here since August 1.

August bill: $38 (prorated)
September bill: $81
October bill: $139
November bill: $308

NO change in actual usage (ie. new appliances, heat, etc). So I called the co-op.

Guy from the electric co-op came out, popped the cover off the meter, and waved away the smoke. The whole back side of the meter was MELTED. His comment: "We've been getting a LOT of these malfunctions since we switched to the new digital meters."

/still waiting for the adjusted bill

Do you still feel the pain?

jbtilley

Stupid heat pumps

Don't you love how they pump out room temperature air???

something-arity_ensues
"I'm out at least 15, maybe 2-grand, maybe more," Moris said.
Well, which is it? 15 grand, 2 grand, or more?

If makes more sense you read "15" as "fifteen hundred" so I think he's saying $1500 to $2000. Lame reporting at it's finest. There's a proper way to render colloquial speech into print. I don't know what it is but this isn't it.

Around here, the price of electricity fluctuates a great deal depending on the season.

In the winter, when I'm running the heater, it's around $80-$100

In the summer, when I don't run the AC, it's around $100-$120.

If it were to suddenly go up $10 in the wintertime, I probably wouldn't bat an eye on the lower bills. But when summer rolls around and the $120 bill turns into a $130 bill, I'd be checking into things.

Yes, I use more electricity in the winter than in the summer, but the summer bill is HIGHER!

/~1000 square foot condo +washer/dryer & central heating/cooling

//all electricity, no gas

We had an off-peak water heater put in few years ago (it runs at full power at night and 30% power during the day for cheaper energy), and that meter is digital. It records energy use in peak/off-peak times, and has a little window with IR receiver in it, so to 'check the meter' the dude simply puts his scanner against the window, and it transfers the usage straight to his system.
Having said that, as a lot of people have pointed out, if there was a slight error in this, we'd have no idea. It makes sense why this guy didnt know, he was paying for a standard bill rate, and simply wasnt aware it was someone elses bill until he wasnt at home and still got charged. Theres no way you could tell, short of shutting off all your power for a month and seeing if the bill changes.

NoleFarker: Don't you love how they pump out room temperature air???

If it does that, it's broken.

/heat pump takes condo from 64 degrees to 80 degrees when I get home.

I get my broadband/TV cable from a well-known bankrupt company. When I moved apartments, the guy came and hooked it up. A couple of months later, I had a problem with the TV. I called the company, gave the customer service person my a/c # and she looked me up and said, oh goshdarn, the installer never filed the paperwork. At that point I realized I had never received a bill. She was biatching and moaning abt all the work it would cause her, so I said, why not forget I called? I was joking. She said, I just forgot you called.

18 months of free TV and broadband later, the company paid a visit to my building and cut me off. I called, and confessed to my crimes, and offered to pay the 18 months' bills and the customer service rep, oh shoot, that's so much paperwork. How abt I just set you up with a new account and you pay from now on, hon?

I hit it.

(This is what you get when you pay your customer service reps min wage).

Then, I moved downstairs in the same building. Opened an account with electric utility. On my first bill, I got a $700+ credit. The new meter reading was lower than the previous one.

I am not the kind of person who knows anything abt "fixing" meter boxes, but I'm also not the kind of person who calls to complain abt a ridiculous credit.


Sigh. If only HMOs were run like utilities.

I would tell them to pay me for the 3 years and give me free electricity for four years!