A Complaint Letter To The Crappiest Electric/Gas Company Billing Service Out There

...posted on my blog because, gasp(!), they do not provide residential customers with an email address or written address for complaints. What, allow a PAPER TRAIL of how much they suck???? No way. Instead they will list a phone number for you to call. Bet its farmed out to India or something. Not bothering. After all, what is that poor person on the other end of the phone going to do?? Nothing. And they aren't responsible for or able to fix anything anyways. Beautiful set up for a crappy company.


So - we live in military housing, right? Well, civilian run military housing. And non-military can live in it also if they meet certain criteria.

And one of the selling points of trying to get the military to move into old, crusty, poorly insulated, totally over priced for what you get and uglier than sin housing is the "government rate" utility bills.

Except the newest utility company that won this government contract got the wrong memo. Apparently they thought this was one of those charge the government $600 for a $6 wrench kind of deals. No dude. Its not the government paying this bill. It's little Joe Airman. You know, the one that doesn't make anywhere near as much as his civilian counterpart .... which is WHY they have to give health care, housing allowances and deals on utilities....to bring them UP TO somewhere close to what a civilian makes.

So overcharging all winter last year -- to the tune of OVER $300 a month on electric/gas for a 1400 sq foot house...... Well, there was a whole lot of freezing and using the kids milk money to pay those bills by all the poor military saps unlucky enough to rent these houses.

Now, eventually that did get fixed in lowered bills over time for all the overcharges. But seriously? Are you proud of that? Shame on you.

And then what do we get the first month of this year? What? You couldn't go that long without trying to screw us again? Seriously?

So we pay our electric bills at the first of the month like we've all been doing this last year. And its higher than normal due to heating costs. So we are already tightening our belts all across the board. And the 15th of the month comes...along with another FULL MONTHS bill. So, we are being charged for two full months in one month or we must pay a late fee. Oh - and there is no grace period with this company.

What military family can do that???????? (Okay so we were covered but thats because we are Dave Ramsey fans and have an incredible budgeting system worked out that would sustain the strain until the next payday.)

You see, this company just decided that they were going to print the bills a little early this month, which in turn changes the due date.

You can imagine the panic. And the calls to housing. So housing works out to give us until Feb 5th to pay the bill. A ONE TIME exception for us.

WHAT???? Why are we being treated like people that don't pay our bills? And what company is so awful that they print bills whenever they feel like it instead of on a routine schedule? I'll tell you what company. One that was looking forward to a massive amount of $15 late fees to start the year with. I was very lucky I caught the change...it was by accident.

And you know what else they said? To not forget we could have this bill on allotment and pulled directly out of our paychecks.

Aaaauuuummmmm....that definitely means you would have recieved a late fee as the allotment is paid on a certain date each month. (And this situation is exactly why I will not allow allotments or auto pays on bills.)

So, if you are a friend in this area...do me a favor. Make sure and call housing and complain so we can get this company kicked to the curb. Women and children that are dealing with their husbands TDY, deployments and hazardous duty pay do NOT need this kind of crappy business practices shoved down our throats also.

These guys gotta go.