Powerless

So, yesterday afternoon was your typical annoyed at the second day of the work week Tuesday afternoon, where it's hot, and sunny and gorgeous and hot out (oh wait, that's not usual in Rochester, but whatever) and all you want to do is go home, grab a cool drink and enjoy some air conditioning and a shower before your evening plans.

Well in my world yesterday, that wasn't going to happen.

I came home from teaching at 2:00pm, right in the middle of the hottest part of the day, after being in my non-air conditioned car for the last 4 1/2 hours driving to lessons, to discover a notice from RG&E (local power company) and no electricity.

It turns out, when I postdated all my bills online back in April before leaving town for my sister's wedding, I must have missed some little check box on RG&E's website and my payment never went through. It also appears that even though they have my email (where my bill comes every month) and I use their website monthly, they have our home phone number and my cell phone number, that all they did to tell me this was put a note in my paper bill. I asked the customer service woman why they didn't use another means of communication when I didn't respond to one, and she was quite rude and let me know all intelligent people read everything on all their bills before paying them and it's the responsible thing to do with your money.

I don't know about you, but when I pay something online, I don't really ever look at my paper bills. I just keep them on hand as a reminder to go to the website and pay the bill, and don't even usually open them unless there's something outrageous on the bill online. It saves time, hassle, and filing paperwork, which I did ridiculous amounts of when working corporate business for 4 years before teaching full time.

So, anyways, instead of showing the past due bill in my online statement, or emailing me a payment reminder like they email me a notification that my bill is ready to pay online, or calling either phone number, they put it in the paper thing for three months. Now, wouldn't you think that after three months of me still not paying the old bill, but paying all the current ones ontime, they would have called/emailed/posted in my online statement that I was on my final warning?

Nope! We had our power shut off on us yesterday. And, when they shut it off, they don't turn it back on for a minimum of 24 hours, to prove a point. Nice, huh?

Honestly, I know it's my fault, I should look at my paper bills. But, when you pull up your payment amount online and it's within a few dollars of normal every single month for over a year, you get tired of double checking the amount on a slip of paper inside a windowed envelope. So, I know I messed up, and they had every right to shut off our power.

It just would have been nice if they'd tried COMMUNICATING IN A FORM THIS CENTURY USES BEFORE JUST SHUTTING US OFF!!! Especially since yesterday was the hottest day so far this year, at a whopping 84 degrees!

Needless to say, I'm wishing Rochester had more than one power company about now, and RG&E's will be getting some very negative feedback on their online complaints form when it comes to their customer relation skills. Not that they'll read it because they're obviously computer illiterate.