Way Too Long Part Deux -OR- How I Killed My Blogging Career

Jeez I am just plain old bad at getting this updates on a regular schedule. Comparatively Wade Bates and Huffy are destroying me. I HAVE to get on this regularly. I hope that this (my third or fourth attempt) is the post that does the deed.

And with this post, I will be alerting you of a gripe. What grinds my gears, if you will. I am a younger gentleman, in case you didn't know, in my lower twenties, and I have been paying utility bills for the first time in my life. I understood that these bills fluctuate going into this stage in my life and I also knew that there was an option to jump onto budget billing. Never did I expect them to fluctuate as much as they have. With that, we will move into a tale of cold nights and outrageous estimates.

When I moved into my apartment at the end of July last year, I called up my utilities company to assign the gas and electric to my name and to create a new account. This utilities company shall remain nameless, but lets say that they wanted me to join an ALLIANCE with them. During this process I decided to find out what the budget billing would be and found that it would be out of my price range, something like $120 a month or along those lines. So I decided to take my chances with month to month. It started out fantastic. I was paying $56-$59 a month for gas and electric. I was able to turn on the air conditioning and live rather comfortably without any crazy increase in my bill. When it got to be chilly, I wasn't sure what my bill was going to be, I assumed more, but I wasn't sure how much more. So in order to conserve energy, I kept my thermostat at an even 60 degrees. Many people would say that this was too cold, and that their thermostat was at least up to 68. I figured this would help me to stay under $100 when my bill came for that month. An understandable assumption you might say. This was not the case...

I came into the studio one chilly December day and checked my email, as it is the first thing I do when I get in, and noticed an email from my utility company informing me that my utility bill was available for me to pay and that it was... brace yourself... $189. Now, let's pause for a minute and think about how much of an increase this really is. $189 is more than TRIPLE $56-$59. I had my thermostat set to 60 degrees... in an apartment... on the second story! Heat rises doesn't it? In comparison, I spoke with many home owners and the prices that they quoted me that they pay ranged between $170 and $200... for an entire HOUSE! And I'm just heating a two bedroom apartment that, while comfortable for a single man, is FAR from huge. I called my utility company thinking surely there must be some mistake. The costumer service rep told me that it was indeed correct and that perhaps I should plastic the windows and better insulate. I agreed and began a new approach.

So I put plastic around my windows, closed myself off to live ONLY in the living room so that I wasn't heating any other rooms. I turned off my gas heat COMPLETELY and began heating only that one room with an electric space heater. I thought that surely this would help my bill be reduced. So, after a month of living in a very cold apartment with no sunlight (the window shades had to be behind the window plastic, and therefore could not be opened) I received my next bill. It was... get this... two dollars less. Yes, $187. You might be thinking, "Well, Joe, they estimate their rates every once and awhile when they can't actually read your meter." You would be right, that was indeed an estimate and was based on my last month of energy consumption as well as last year's monthly rate. However, in this guess (and I do say "guess" since "estimate" is an "educated guess," and there obviously wasn't any education behind this guess,) they said that I had used 0 units of electricity. ZERO. Did I somehow turn Amish during the month of January? I can only imagine how this "guess" would come to be. I will now give my "estimate" of how this billed amount came to fruition in the form of a play script.

Joe's Energy Bill Guess Short Play

(The room is brightly lit with cubicles as far as the eye can see. Center stage we see one cubicle opened up to the audience with a new employee, Jan, training with long time AK Energy employee Mike.)

MIKE: (using those cheesy hand quote gestures) So Jan, sometimes we don't actually read these so-called "meters" at our clients' buildings. We do "estimates" when we "don't have the time" to get there.

JAN: How do we go about arriving at those estimates?

MIKE: Well, it's easier to see an example rather than hypothesize. So let's pull someone's file... How about this Joe Truesdale gentleman? (Mike reaches for a file and opens it on Jan's desk.) What do you notice first?

JAN: Well, his last month was a lot more. He must have used a lot of gas heating his place of residence. But, he does have an apartment... wouldn't it cost less to heat that?

MIKE: Common misconception. It costs just as much, if not MORE to heat smaller spaces than it does larger ones.

JAN: Interesting.

MIKE: Isn't it? It's knowledge that translates to power. Now, we will make an estimate on Mr. Truesdale's bill. How about... $187.

JAN: Okay, so that would mean we would put about $40 into his electric and the rest into his gas right?

MIKE: Again, you might think that, but you are totally wrong. See, in an effort to save himself some money, he probably turned off all of his lights, didn't watch any TV, never checked anything on his computer, unplugged his refrigerator, never charged his cell phone, didn't have any alarm clocks plugged in, and refused to cook anything whether in the microwave or on the stove. And in doing that, he thought that he could then have his heat at a nice roasty, toasty 60 degrees.

JAN: 60 degrees is toasty? Wow. I feel like I'm learning so much.

MIKE: You don't know that half of it! Next we'll get into how to blow off costumer complaints!

(Lights fade to black as the audience nods their heads and thinks, "Huh, that makes sense now.")

THE END

Or something like that at least... So obviously I called, they said that when they make their "guesses" they will adjust on the next bill in order to compensate one way or the other. Why is this? Do they think, "Well, we have more in debt payments this month, so let's 'guess' some more on these poor chumps so we can make our ends meet, and next month we're fine"?

So I waited for them to actually read my meter, and on February 20th I receive my latest energy bill for... drumroll please... $11.97. Wow. Well, I was obviously happy about that, but still have to wonder... will this next bill be another $12 one on an estimate and then I'll get obliterated when they compensate for $200 the following cycle? Will they try to make up for the $12 by charging me $200 right away? Or will everything just go back to the normal $56-$59 bills? Somehow I doubt the latter... Hopefully the next time I discuss my energy bill it will be in a more positive light. Somehow I doubt that too.