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ABOUT zwarg.blog CATEGORIES MAIN ARCHIVES 1999(14) [+] 2000(3) [+] 2001(4) [+] 2002(18) [+] 2003(159) [+] 2004(108) [+] 2005(129) [+] 2006(38) [+] 2007(23) [+] 2008(8) [+] 2009(3) [+]United States vs. Iraq
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Monday, June 18 2007
"they are screwing us, i think"
Today I get this email from our downstairs neighbor:
i have a [NAME OF GAS PROVIDER HERE] question for you- do you have a
[OBSCENE DOLLAR AMOUNT] credit from them?
have your bills been astronomically high this winter? they are
claiming that our meters were switched and now that they have
corrected it and switched them back (meaning that I owe [OBSCENE
DOLLAR AMOUNT]). my
reasoning then tells me that you would have paid all that in the past
year, and would have been given a credit. wondering if that happened.
i need to file an official complaint, but wanted to get some more info first. i am pretty salty about the whole situation. ... Oh, salty indeed. Now I need to pow-wow with our neighbor to figure out what the hell the gas crack heads are thinking now. Tuesday, February 20 2007
I was waiting at home yesterday.
I played a lot of "Shadow of the Colossus" waiting for So now it's in their court. If they want to stand me up like that, they can call me back and reschedule if it is so important. I have no idea what I have to do to get my meter serviced. Seriously. What needs to be done? I can't trust the monopoly monkeys to figure it out. Thursday, February 15 2007
So predicable!
The gas company serviceman calls me today at the office. "I'm at your
location for your gas service." What a bunch of dufuses. I schedule a time, and they show up whenever. How they assume they can make money, I have no idea. More laughs to come, I'm sure. Monday, February 12 2007 I call this number to get a hold of the gas company to arrange a gas meter reading. "You need gas installed?" Well then. I call this number. "Where'd you get this number?" Good what? I need to have someone wish me good luck?! [whoah, psychic connection!] Great. I'm just pickled now. I call the number. It's some canned voice mailbox greeting with a beep. I leave my number and my hopes, and hang up. "This is never going to happen," I think. Then, the psychic fairies have answered my prayers, and the phone rings while I'm writing this. A call back. An appointment made. My meter will be read soon?! Well, don't hold your breath. This is a saga, after all. I wish it could have been simple. I really do. But you wanted it the hard way. So these are notes of my experience with the gas company here in Philly: I did the normal thing when you move in to an apartment: call the gas company to get gas switched over to your name. I call the gas company, and they switch the account in their 'central office', and tell me I'm all set. "Do I need anyone to come to the house to turn on the gas?" I ask. Okay, so I get home and ... no gas. I call the landlord, and he gives me the lowdown. When he was remodeling, the meter had been physically removed during the remodeling. We needed to have a meter installed. Our landlord was very helpful, and told me that I needed to make an appointment and get a new meter. Also, he noted that the gas company had put a lock on the valve to the gas main. I call. I tell them I need new service. They switch me in their computer, and say I'm all set. I tell them I need to have someone come out the house to install a meter. The conversation goes like this: "I need to have gas installed." So I get an appointment for someone to come out and install the gas. It is the DAY I HAVE JURY DUTY. Fuck. I go to Jury Duty and get home, and nobody has been to the house yet. Stressful day over (I think). I hang out at home, waiting for Mr. Gas Company Serviceman to arrive and hook me up. After a few hours, I get curious, and walk down to our front door to see if there's perhaps a large gaping hole in the planet's crust, keeping gas company vehicles from driving down my street. Oh, a notice. How nice. The gentleman was here 15 minutes ago, and didn't bother to knock, ring the bell, or do anything a normal human being would do if a normal human being had to service a gas meter. Grr.I have to call AGAIN, and take ANOTHER day off of work for these schmucks to install the gas. My landlord, being very cooperative, offered to be available during that time, so that I don't have to take the day off of work. What a swell guy. I go to work the next day, and get home and ... the gas is on! So what that the house smells a little like gas? WHO CARES? I hear later that day that even though we gave explicit instructions to the gas company to call my landlord (and left a note on the front door to that effect), the gas serviceman almost made it away without contacting anyone about his presence, except that my landlord happened to walk around the corner to see him and flag him down. He gets the dufus inside, and (according to my landlord) the guy doesn't know a gas meter from a gaping hole in the wall. He takes a really long time to do whatever he has to do, and he takes a lot of readings around the house, poking around and putzing and doing who knows what. "This guy was an idiot," says the landlord. Anyway...we think "oh, just one of those idiot repairmen." We smell gas for the next couple days, thinking, "oh, they must have bled the lines, and it's just not disappated yet." No, no explosions. Our neighbor comes home, and it smells like a refinery in her apartment, so she calls the gas company emergency line, and they shut off the entire house. Since she lives on the first floor, they are able to check out her apartment and the basement, but NOT our apartment on the top floor. This means they shut off our gas for safety reasons, because they can't get into our place to make sure things are cool. We see our neighbor on the street, get the story, and moan. "Not again." I call the emergency number to get our gas turned on again (perhaps an abuse of the emergency system), and some guys show up and check out the basement and our apartment. Turns out, there's a leak. Why the first idiot turned on the gas in the first place seems to be a mystery, since gas was leaking all over the place when our apartment was turned on. So the guys say, "get a plumber, we can't turn on the gas until it's fixed." ugh. Did I mention our landlord is a plumber? He volunteers to fix the gas line the next day, and the day after, we finally have gas turned on and working. whew. ... Time passes. ... In January, we get a shut off notice from PGW. It says, "you are receiving gas illegally, and will be disconnected." I'll have to pay over $300 if they dig up the street to do so, and a bunch of other threatening language. Naturally, I call the company, and they say, "ignore that notice." Fine. I ignore it. Our gas is not disconnected in three days, and the street is not torn up to discontinue our gas service. ... Time passes. ... I get a telephone call at work, "Hello, this is the gas company, are you home?" Apparently, they thought I disconnected myself and needed to be reconnected to myself. Well, that threw me for a loop. Nobody called me, they just sent out some guy to install gas for a customer that already had gas. Genius. "Did you call to make this appointment?" So he writes a notice down that he was here, and leaves a telephone number to call to make an appointment to read the meter. I'm pissed, so I don't call. |
