Bills

[DailyDiapers]

[ValentinesStuff]

My electric bill jumped 75% one month. Since I pay an averaged bill, this wasn't from increased use, but a rate hike. 75%!

[beallucanb]

I'm in this house 19 years, last winter was the first time my bill went nuts for the 4 coldest months

I hope this winter isn't going to be any worse than the last

 

[babykeiff]

51 minutes ago, beallucanb said:

I'm in this house 19 years, last winter was the first time my bill went nuts for the 4 coldest months

I hope this winter isn't going to be any worse than the last

 

Unfortunately, due to whatever you wish to call it or deny it exists, global warming etc, the world weather patterns are in the process of change which results in futher extremes of weather on both sides - i.e. hotter summers, colder winters, wetter / more agressive rain etc. It is part of the planet trying to find a balance, and since the summer (in the northern hemisphere) was hotter by a percentage, the winter will be colder by the same percentage - that if the word is in balance, however it is not, so winter will be colder by a greater percentage and the following summer will be hotter by a greater percentage, and this and this trend will continue until an equalibrium is reached.

Over the past few years, summers were extreme in areas as compared to usual, and winters have been colder. In places of rain, they have been heavier but when compared to the previous years values, they are 1-5% different ie hotter / colder / wetter.

The reasons for this change is basically polution - from burning ALL carbon containing products - i.e paper, wood, coal, oil, plastic, gas in all forms as doing so bonds chemically hydrogen and similar gases to carbon which allows same to rise high into the ionosphere. This does three things,

• it blocks certain elements of sunlight which increases its ultra-violet strength
• the carbon chemicals mix with rain where the water increases its acidity.
• the ioniosphere lets less heat out similar to the behaviour of glass in a greenhouse which increases temprature in certain areas of the world.

These actions, due to increased thermal differences, amplifies the effect of the local weather events.

Although the populus world belief is that mankind has not done enough damage to make this irreversable, the scientific community disagrees and believes that it will take a lot of time before 'mother nature' finds a balance, and using historical comparisons of weather instability, predict that the weather changes will continue to exagerate until we get a partial ice age again.

[barnburner]

There was an electric company scandal here recently where they charged more or something like that, Im getting a whopping $2.17 back on a debit card!

[feralfreak]

2 hours ago, barnburner said:

There was an electric company scandal here recently where they charged more or something like that, Im getting a whopping $2.17 back on a debit card!

thats almost enough to get a fountain drink, almost...

[Dubious]

My bill for August was like $40. 

During the winter months, when there is below freezing it will go up to about $120-140.
Only have a heat pump for warmth, and its usually enough. 

[rusty pins]

17 hours ago, barnburner said:

There was an electric company scandal here recently where they charged more or something like that, Im getting a whopping $2.17 back on a debit card!

 

14 hours ago, feralfreak said:

thats almost enough to get a fountain drink, almost...

Not at Hershey Park!  I was there almost a month ago and a fountain drink was over $5

[~Brian~]

I ended up seeing something on Facebook that was pretty funny: since Mikey posted something about bills, the thing that was funny was it said:

"I don't have bills anymore, they've grown up I call them William's" 😁😁😁😁😂😂🤣🤣

Brian

[Crinklz Kat]

39 minutes ago, ~Brian~ said:

I ended up seeing something on Facebook that was pretty funny: since Mikey posted something about bills, the thing that was funny was it said:

"I don't have bills anymore, they've grown up I call them William's" 😁😁😁😁😂😂🤣🤣

Brian

I'll have to remember that one!

[~Brian~]

That picture that is underneath what Mikey posted when he was talking about opening the Bills, in that smile on that woman's face kind of reminds me of what happened to me. When Mikey said he had a $700 sewer bill or something to that effect, because of water leaking through and because the toilet was running constantly, what happened to me was that I bought myself a new iPhone 14 pro.

Now for the interesting part: the interesting part was that there was an idea that I buy this phone. I had one payment left on my iphone 12, Which I paid, then I ordered the phone, and they said that I would have the ability to send the phone back to make a trade in, so I wiped it out and I have it sitting on my desk. Then because I ordered it on like this 5th of the 6th of July, I had every intention of returning the device. Then comes all this rain, the floods of July 10th and 11th decimate the state, and other states as well, and I was unable to send the phone back because of severe flooding all over the state including in Barre and montpelier VT and other places. So I didn't get a chance to send the phone in, then I asked them for a shipping kit so I can ship the thing back

then we get into another problem. They tell me that I can get a label that I can put on a box to send it back, but unfortunately what happens is I cannot receive the label 'cause I can't get it even if I look in all of my junk boxes, I cleaned out over about 40,000 messages in all of my email accounts during that week, so I know if I would have gotten something from AT&T it would have been something that I would be able to see, and I would know the difference. I always get build notifications on my main account so I know that my bill is due, so there should be no problem getting those types of things from AT&T, but I could not get them. So they sent me that box and I made a mistake because I wasn't sure of the packing instructions, and I would get it wrong, so I basically called them right up told them what I had done, explained that the particular instructions were hard to follow for some reason because I made a mistake reading them or something, and I asked them for another shipping kit.

They say they sent it, so then I call them the following week I still haven't gotten it, two weeks later still hadn't gotten, so they end up giving me an additional 30 days and I asked him again to send to me another kit I end up spending four hours on the phone to try to get that corrected so I have it in my hand, and then I just got mad because they did not send me it again, they said they did, and it cost me over $1000 in rebates because I could have had that phone return to me in the form of credit because my phone is in good condition and I probably would have gotten close to $1000 off the bill because they cut it off meaning it's like 20 some odd dollars or 40 some odd dollars a month for each phone that you return, and that lowers the amount that you pay on your bill as far as your payoff because it goes against the balance of what you owe.

So I basically call AT&T about a week ago. I got to the point where it was getting ridiculous, and the next thing I know is I told the lady I said listen, you guys told me that you were gonna give me a shipping box or a shipping kit or whatever it is, and I still haven't gotten it, the only thing I've gotten was one shipping kit and I made a mistake, you have my address because you send bills to it, you have my address and you have all of my other information, so why should it be this bad? Why can't I get a rebate on this device when I can't even send it to you because I can't get the box to you i'm not sure where to send it and I've spent 4 or 5 hours on the phone at least to talk to a lady who has relate to AT&T that I called about seven times regarding this return, for a rebate. I want to stay with this company I tell them, and I want it made right. I asked to speak to a supervisor because I want consideration for the fact that I can't return it because the return window has expired and I want my credits. I told the lady all I'm looking for is to be having something that's fair and this is what she did.

She told me that she would put through a request for $500 off of my phone bill, in consideration for the fact that I could not return a device because for some reason I wasn't getting the labels I wasn't getting the equipment return boxes, and that was something that she could do as a one time credit. I told her that it would be awesome for her to do that comment and that's all I asked was to be having something happen that was fair. With them taking off $500, it makes it a lot easier, and it also compensates me for pretty close to the value of the phone that I would have returned in the first place, and I thanked her up and down for that particular courtesy.

I guess customer service isn't totally dead, but sometimes I wonder if they're just doing it because someone says that what has to happen, and being a supervisor means that you should have the ability to override something when 1 in 1 should equal two but it equals 100. When it equals 100, it doesn't make any sense, and what I'm seeing by equaling 100, is one plus 1 = 2 so if I send my phone back I send one phone back and I get credits so one phone plus sending it back is 2 which is equivalent to the credits, but unfortunately the credits had expired, so I'm glad that she was able to do that for me. Cause of stuff like this, I am constantly aware that there are still companies out there that care about their customers, and I wish that people would take a page out of the book for certain people that care about what's going on, and take a page out of the book of North Shore, because they care about their customers and they will do anything they can to make them have what they need. I'm very glad that there are still companies out there that care about their customers, rather than their bottom line. Better customer service means that customers have the ability to understand and the ability to forgive stupidity sometimes, but if you have good people that care about customer service that goes a long way in my book.

Brian

[beallucanb]

I hope but I do know better.

[babykeiff]

23 hours ago, ~Brian~ said:

That picture that is underneath what Mikey posted when he was talking about opening the Bills, in that smile on that woman's face kind of reminds me of what happened to me. When Mikey said he had a $700 sewer bill or something to that effect, because of water leaking through and because the toilet was running constantly, what happened to me was that I bought myself a new iPhone 14 pro.

Now for the interesting part: the interesting part was that there was an idea that I buy this phone. I had one payment left on my iphone 12, Which I paid, then I ordered the phone, and they said that I would have the ability to send the phone back to make a trade in, so I wiped it out and I have it sitting on my desk. Then because I ordered it on like this 5th of the 6th of July, I had every intention of returning the device. Then comes all this rain, the floods of July 10th and 11th decimate the state, and other states as well, and I was unable to send the phone back because of severe flooding all over the state including in Barre and montpelier VT and other places. So I didn't get a chance to send the phone in, then I asked them for a shipping kit so I can ship the thing back

then we get into another problem. They tell me that I can get a label that I can put on a box to send it back, but unfortunately what happens is I cannot receive the label 'cause I can't get it even if I look in all of my junk boxes, I cleaned out over about 40,000 messages in all of my email accounts during that week, so I know if I would have gotten something from AT&T it would have been something that I would be able to see, and I would know the difference. I always get build notifications on my main account so I know that my bill is due, so there should be no problem getting those types of things from AT&T, but I could not get them. So they sent me that box and I made a mistake because I wasn't sure of the packing instructions, and I would get it wrong, so I basically called them right up told them what I had done, explained that the particular instructions were hard to follow for some reason because I made a mistake reading them or something, and I asked them for another shipping kit.

They say they sent it, so then I call them the following week I still haven't gotten it, two weeks later still hadn't gotten, so they end up giving me an additional 30 days and I asked him again to send to me another kit I end up spending four hours on the phone to try to get that corrected so I have it in my hand, and then I just got mad because they did not send me it again, they said they did, and it cost me over $1000 in rebates because I could have had that phone return to me in the form of credit because my phone is in good condition and I probably would have gotten close to $1000 off the bill because they cut it off meaning it's like 20 some odd dollars or 40 some odd dollars a month for each phone that you return, and that lowers the amount that you pay on your bill as far as your payoff because it goes against the balance of what you owe.

So I basically call AT&T about a week ago. I got to the point where it was getting ridiculous, and the next thing I know is I told the lady I said listen, you guys told me that you were gonna give me a shipping box or a shipping kit or whatever it is, and I still haven't gotten it, the only thing I've gotten was one shipping kit and I made a mistake, you have my address because you send bills to it, you have my address and you have all of my other information, so why should it be this bad? Why can't I get a rebate on this device when I can't even send it to you because I can't get the box to you i'm not sure where to send it and I've spent 4 or 5 hours on the phone at least to talk to a lady who has relate to AT&T that I called about seven times regarding this return, for a rebate. I want to stay with this company I tell them, and I want it made right. I asked to speak to a supervisor because I want consideration for the fact that I can't return it because the return window has expired and I want my credits. I told the lady all I'm looking for is to be having something that's fair and this is what she did.

She told me that she would put through a request for $500 off of my phone bill, in consideration for the fact that I could not return a device because for some reason I wasn't getting the labels I wasn't getting the equipment return boxes, and that was something that she could do as a one time credit. I told her that it would be awesome for her to do that comment and that's all I asked was to be having something happen that was fair. With them taking off $500, it makes it a lot easier, and it also compensates me for pretty close to the value of the phone that I would have returned in the first place, and I thanked her up and down for that particular courtesy.

I guess customer service isn't totally dead, but sometimes I wonder if they're just doing it because someone says that what has to happen, and being a supervisor means that you should have the ability to override something when 1 in 1 should equal two but it equals 100. When it equals 100, it doesn't make any sense, and what I'm seeing by equaling 100, is one plus 1 = 2 so if I send my phone back I send one phone back and I get credits so one phone plus sending it back is 2 which is equivalent to the credits, but unfortunately the credits had expired, so I'm glad that she was able to do that for me. Cause of stuff like this, I am constantly aware that there are still companies out there that care about their customers, and I wish that people would take a page out of the book for certain people that care about what's going on, and take a page out of the book of North Shore, because they care about their customers and they will do anything they can to make them have what they need. I'm very glad that there are still companies out there that care about their customers, rather than their bottom line. Better customer service means that customers have the ability to understand and the ability to forgive stupidity sometimes, but if you have good people that care about customer service that goes a long way in my book.

Brian

I have found, similar to your experience, that if you shut up and accept what a business does, they tend to go out of their way to rightly screw you. However, if you take the time, and similar to you, hours of your life trolling customer support plus plus, the company might go out of their way to do what is somewhat right. From a personal perspective, I find it devious and deceitful that companies behave like this, so when a company does that on me, although they recompense me somewhat, I have no love for said company and look around to find a better deal with their competitor.

I have found that it is the larger companies that tend to take that attidude - and presume that their clients will take it.

I am glad that you were recompensed in somewhat, but I am sorry that it took that effort. I suggest that as soon as your contract expires, you shift - and to remind yourself of this event (since most contracts last 12-18 months or longer and human memory tends to fade the details) that you send yourself a timed email / text today at the week / month of contract end of the full event and your experiences, so that you will remember to change to another service provider.