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?
That is an awesome credit! Are they going to send you a check, or you just won't have an actual bill to pay w/ the water department for the next year (or more). Matt does all the bills now, and he reads them very well and calls if he has any complaints. We were talking last night about cutting back on various things – like a phone at home (do we really need one?) and how to cut back on electricity.
They just credited me.. so i won't have to pay a bill for what.. a year-ish?
You know… for home phone, we have Vonage. It's cheap enough, and it gives us everything we had with the phone company and more. There are also less expensive options, like Skype or Magic Jack, but I always need a house phone since we don't have unlimited cell minutes & a lot of people we know aren't on the same network anymore… plus.. my cell service BITES at home, so rather than deal with dropped calls all day.. i use the house phone… 🙂
We had the same sort of thing for health insurance. Back when we had only 1 child, the company changed insurance providers and we had to go through the paperwork fun again. Somewhere, somehow it was recorded that we had 2 children and were charged so…and we didn't notice it for a good couple of years. When we found out, we were credited back and didn't have the health insurance taken our of my husbands bi-weekly check for 8 months. It was great! We took that extra money and put it in our savings account each week…it was amazing how much it added up!
It’s scary how companies can do this and not notify the consumers. Makes me wonder how many people out there are owed money and don’t even know it!!
I just happened on your site after seeing your site on the Michael Angelo contest email. Since I am relatively new to couponing, I like to check out any newsites I come across when I saw your post. This EXACT issue happened to us around November of 2009. I had been paying the water bill, never noticing we were being charged for city sewage, and I have a septic tank in my back yard! My husband took over the water bill payments and questioned me about the charge. Yes, I felt DUMB! I had my home built 13 years ago and although they had been charging me (and yes, I admit, I should have noticed this) that long, they said they would only go back 3 years. My husband tried to fight it but not nowhere. They also wanted to credit our account but we insisted on a refund, which we got for over $800. Nice chunk of change but not everything I have paid them. Certainly taught me a lesson as well.