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Someone’s Not Paying For Their Electricity
By Saver | June 17, 2008
We moved out of our old apartment on March 12th. We did not turn off the electricity, because it was still cold at that point and a different apartment in our building had already had a problem with pipe freezing. Rather, we asked our landlord to call the electricity company and switch it back to his name. I also think we were doing him a favor because it’s free to switch names but if you turn it off and then back on there is an additional fee. In any case, he said he would. We shortly got our regular monthly bill, which was for Feb 20-March 20 and was due April 15th. We paid it (without minding the 5 extra days) and thought we were good to go. Not so much.
We got another bill a few weeks ago, for electricity usage March 20-April 20. Spender called the electric company to see if anything had been done. Nope, nothing. We canceled the service, but could only make it effective April 20th. Grrr. We were left with a bill for $163.78!
Spender called our landlord and was told everything would be taken care of. The landlord had asked the new tenant to switch it over, but they never did, but the landlord would make sure it got fixed. Last week, Spender got a phone call from the electricity, saying that our bill was now past due. It was actually in danger of becoming 30 days past due, which means it could show up on our credit reports.
Now, I really really don’t want to pay for this bill. However, our landlord isn’t the most responsive one ever. He’s an older man, who bought a condo as an investment property. He was always very nice, but things were often a bit of a negotiation with him. It’s probably typical of an owner-landlord vs. a property management company landlord: decent guy, doesn’t really know how to handle the different issues that come up.
Spender considered giving him a second chance (although in my opinion it would have been a third chance), but we decided the best plan was to pay the bill ourselves, and to be sure it wouldn’t do any damage to our credit. The next step is to get our landlord to pay us back directly. In the end, I do trust the landlord to do what’s right, so I think this is the best plan. We are going to send a stamped, self-addressed envelope so all he has to do is write a check.
There is a small chance that we’ll be out $163.78. Which sucks, but it is probably worth that to keep our credit clean. But with any luck, we’ll get our money back and we’ll have learned not to rely on other people to do anything when it’s your money that’s on the line.
Topics: Money Stories, Saver's Posts | Related Posts: 4 Phases of Money Merging, The Dull Assignment, July Net Worth Update
June 23rd, 2008 at 1:50 am
[...] Someones Not Paying For Their ElectricityWe got another bill a few weeks ago, for electricity usage March 20-April 20. Spender called the electric company to see if anything had been done. Nope, nothing. We canceled the service, but could only make it effective April 20th. … [...]