Since the last minirant thread seems to have petered out over a week ago, I’m starting a new one.
Look, RGE, you’re the fuckers who decided that if I’m paying online, and I still want a fucking paper bill, you’re going to charge me a dollar a month for that paper bill.
That’s your choice, and frankly, in the interests in reducing paper waste, I actually approve.
But this is predicated on your electronic billing system working enough so that I can receive the stupid bill, in the first place, and on your billing system actually telling me what I owe so I can pay the stupid thing!
By Monday, the bill for my electric was almost a week late, compared to when you usually send it out. So I logged into your website, to see what my bill was.
Lo and behold, the most recent bill, shown there, was the one from February, for January’s services. The date listed for the end of the billing cycle was a week in the past, and there was still no new bill for March, with February’s charges showing. For some reason, I was concerned by this, and chose to call up your Customer Service Center (Hereafter known as your Customer Disservice Center, a cheap shot, I know, but accurate all the same.) to see what was going on.
Now, before I could actually, yanno, talk to a real person, the automated phone system took me through a series of steps, which included telling me what the outstanding balance on my account was. Which was part of what I was looking for. And is evidence that somewhere in that labyrinthian abyss you call a computer system you had all the data you needed to generate the goddamned bill.
As an aside for my audience here on the Dope - the way that RGE’s electronic payment system is set up, one may only make an electronic payment for an amount that less than, or equal to, the amount shown as being outstanding for the account. One cannot pre-pay electronically, nor can one pay electronically without having an outstanding balance to pay.
Where was I? Ah, yes, the mouth-breathing lessron* at the CDC. When I finally got through to an alleged human being, your CDR could not understand what I wanted. Not without ten minutes of explaining that, “I cannot pay the bill electronically, until you post the bill electronically to your billing system.” And if I’m going to be charged for an alternate method of billing, now that I’ve used electronic billing once - I expect it to work!
Without having the impression that I had explained to the lessron I was speaking with why I needed the bill, he did eventually go through the motions for generating a new bill. I don’t understand why he had to generate a new bill, instead of simply getting the fucking billing system to admit to the existence of the old bill, but after that, I could pay my electric bill, and feel I didn’t have to worry about those charges for another month.
Or so I thought.
Today, I get a supplement electronic billing statement from RGE telling me that I owe them $0.40. Going online to see the details of the bill - I am being charged for the rebilling.
So, I’m being charged for the privilege of being billed so I can fucking pay my fucking bill.
No. This is not satisfactory, and I will be glad to educated the whole of the CDC tomorrow morning, when it reopens. If they’re going to issue only electronic bills, they have an obligation to make sure that I can pay those electronic bills. And if I have to prod them to fix their billing system, I am not going to accept any charges to that effect. And if they don’t take that lousy, usurious charge off my bill tout de suite, I will go to the Attorney General’s Office, and make a formal complaint. While I don’t think anyone is going to get excited about a single $0.40 charge, the Attorney General’s Office will want to know if the company is now using that small charge as a revenue source for what is a monopoly charge, without any service attached.
Which would be a rather expensive charge to defend against in court, I believe.
*lessron, because there’s not enough there upstairs to be considered a more of anything.
