So, hubby and I were doing some spring cleaning this weekend… I came across one of my old utility bills from November ’09. I mentioned how I was really surprised about how our water bill recently went from $100+ per month to around $30 per month. I thought.. “Wow.. really? did we cut back that much?? ” I didn’t see how we could have, considering we were already pretty frugal and hadn’t really changed our habits too much. Anyway.. after finding this bill, I thought I understood… I saw a charge that really shouldn’t have been there…
The area we live in has our own little sewer system so we don’t have to pay the city for it. We do still pay the city for our water though.. Well, this old bill showed a charge of around $30 for water and around $70 for sewer! Well, I pay our community system $38 per month for sewer already… I thought, it had to be a long shot, but I called the city today. I explained to them about finding the bill, and how I was concerned about the large difference in charges. Whether I was supposed to be paying it, and I wasn’t now, or if I wasn’t supposed to be paying it, and was owed a credit. They agent that took my call was a little confused, so I gave her my account number, and told her my November bill was over $100, and my most recent bill was just over $30. I told her what community I lived in and explained how we had our own system that the residents paid for. She started looking through everything and realized that something wasn’t right. She told me that she’d go through our billing history and give me a call later with the results, but it definitely looked like we were due a credit. Later on yesterday, she called me back and told me that she was still going through the bills, and would call me back in the morning.
Well, I just got that call. She went through the last year of bills, since we moved in… and get this… I now have a credit of $448.51. No kidding… That’s just about a year’s worth of water for us. Holy Cow!
I know situations like this can be rare… but you never know! I find it a little frustrating that the city would basically find a mistake, fix it in their system, but not notify me, or just credit my account. Why did I have to call them to get this little interest free loan of theirs paid back to me? Did they hope I’d never find it? I’m sure. But it’s taught me a lesson…
I use e-bills through my bank. I don’t get paper bills (Go Earth!)… so I tend to log into the system, see the amount due and just pay it. I don’t usually go through the bills line by line, trusting that the company knows what they’re doing.. Not anymore. I’m going to make sure I check them out from now on, especially if I notice a huge discrepancy like I did on this one. If I would’ve looked earlier, I would’ve noticed I was being charged sewer when I shouldn’t have been, and would’ve saved $450-ish over the last year… and that’s a lot!
Has this ever happened to you? How did you get it fixed? Was the company willing to work with you? or did they give you a hard time?