Estimated ONG Bill

[sgrizzle]

Sometime in December my natural gas meter froze. The only thing in my house running on gas is my furnace and my house is typically warm due to lighting, tv's computers, etc. so my electric bills are usually high but my gas bills are always low.

My meter was replaced two weeks ago and I was told they would estimate two month's billing by looking back at my old useage and add 10% to compensate. Well they went back 3 months and billed me for useage about 12% higher than the same period last year (roughly 30 dekatherms as opposed to 26 last year) I called and was told that it was because of the severity of the winter and how it was "even worse than the 2007 winter storm" (when I used 21 dekatherms over the same time period) The biggest difference is december (in which my meter was still working part of the month) when they estimated my useage at being 40% higher than even the highest of my previous 5 decembers ion the house.

Why is it when their equipment fails, I am required to pay whatever they think I should? They said there math is infallible and they won't change it. I did get them to agree to drop the late payment fee they had tacked on for being late to pay for the gas they hadn't billed me for.

The difference in what they are charging and what they originally told me I would be charged is not huge in terms of dollars, and I'm willing to give them that my useage may have been up from last year, but I can't agree that they should be able to estimate bills on anything other than that particular house's history. Yes, I'm sure other people's bills went up 40% but they had gas water heaters, dryers, ranges and ovens that were all having to work much harder and I don't.

[TeeDub]

Call the corporation commission and lodge a complaint.
http://www.occeweb.com/Divisions/CS/Forms/Maincomp.htm

I know most of the telecom group personally, but I think a few of them help out on the other dockets as well...   


They are paid by you to help you....   

[Breadburner]

My water heater...Gas stove....And gas drier....Dont add squat to my gas bill......

[Hoss]

My water heater...Gas stove....And gas drier....Dont add squat to my gas bill......

Ditto that here....granted there are only two people living in my home, even the harshest of winters our largest bill was $120 (we're on averaging, so really the highest this past winter was about $160 IIRC).

But I feel your pain...the COT has done the same re: sewer usage.  One year I had a leaking toilet; our average water usage per month is about 2-3 thousand gallons.  I wasn't watching the bills very closely and noticed for about 4 months water usage was closer to 10 thousand per month.  Tracked it down to the leaking toilet.  In the interim, COT reassessed the usage for sewer (which is based on water consumption and nothing else evidently) and increased the rate.  I called and raised hell about it.  They sent out a form after I got a new toilet and the averages went down for three straight months and they put us back on the old rate.

Not saying raising hell will get you anything, but couldn't hurt to try, Scott.

[sgrizzle]

I was on average monthly payment but I use a grant total of around $400-$500 per year and the signed me up at $75/month and lowest they would charge was $50/month ($900-$600)

When it was march and I had a near $300 surplus, they turned it off.

[Conan71]

IIRC, the city bases your sewage charge on your winter months usage, that accounts for evaporation and run-off from watering and swimming pools during the summer months.

Evaporation credits was at the center of un-paid water bill disputes by ORU and Big Splash about 10-15 years ago.  ORU uses large evaporative cooling towers in their A/C sytems which only drain off about 1/5 of the total water intake, the rest evaporates.  A swimming pool is pretty self-explanitory, pretty much 100% evaporation with the exception of filter cycles and end of season drain-down. 

[sauerkraut]

ONG charges for everything, when I had my meter turned on they have a fee of $30.00 just to turn on the meter, plus they wanted a big deposit the electric company charges $22.00 to turn on/off your electric meter with a nice deposit too.