Currently Experiencing Technical Difficulties

Last Friday I woke up to find that my electricity had been turned off. I found the latest bill from the power company- I had received it just before leaving for Mayfair. It said I was past due with a balance of 50.00 and said my service was going to be turned off if I didn't pay that amount by June 1. Well, I would have been happy to have payed it if I had checked the bill in time. A week's notice seems kind of short to be turning someone's power off. The only other bill I could find from them was from December.

So I called them up to find out what the hell was going on. The woman said my service had been shut off because I hadn't paid my bill since December. I said I hadn't received any bills in 2007. She said I was being billed electronically. So I asked how that worked exactly (the bills come to my email address.) I said that wasn't happening either so she gave me a number to call for the company that handles their electronic billing. I called them and they had no record of me- I hadn't signed up for electronic billing according to them. The power company hadn't been sending me paper bills and the electronic billing people hadn't been sending me electronic bills. So who was supposed to be sending me bills and why weren't they? I love mysteries. The electronic billing people transfered me back to Allegheney Power.

So I got the same woman back on the line there and told her what the electronic billing people had said. She insisted that I had electronic billing and that I needed to straighten out any billing difficulties with the electronic billing people. And it was going to cost me a couple hundred dollars to get my service restored because they required a deposit plus connection fees (since it had been so long since I had made a payment) plus the original bill. At this point I was completely pissed. I asked why it was that my electric bill was only $50.00 if I hadn't paid anything since December (it should have been several hundred dollars.) She said that was because I had paid too much on my December bill so I had a credit that spilled over into 2007. So the reason I wasn't being billed was because I had over paid my December balance. But that was also the reason my electricity was turned off. Or something.

So because I'm stubborn ass ( I'm not paying them a bunch of extra money just because they are incompetent) I didn't have power all weekend and I've been out chasing jobs today. I'll pick up the battle in the morning. It's not really hurting much of anything except the stuff I had in the fridge. And that doesn't amount to much either with it being a typical bachelor's fridge.

The worst thing is not being able to operate my desktop computer and not having Internet access at home. I have some more posts on Mayfair to do which I'll try to get to tomorrow.