Well, I'm an idiot. But shouldn't the gas company have sent me at least one warning?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

My jaw dropped Tuesday morning. I noticed an e-mail in my personal e-mail inbox - “You have a new bill from xxxxxxxgas.com”

Before we get to that, some background.

I moved into my place about a year ago. I hate, hate writing checks and mailing them so I set up auto-pay for nearly everything. I’m bad at remembering to pay bills so this is helpful. I also have handy overdraft protection so if I go a bit over on the checking account it’s covered, no worries.

I was certain, certain I tell you - all utilities were set up. And I mostly ignore them. Sure, I’ll see them pop up on my bank statement but I figure they’re taken care of.

I guess I was just bored when I opened the very routine one from my gas company.

It read: Your current bill - $700.

W…T…F?! :eek:

This must be some terrible mistake! I pay all my bills! I frantically hopped on their website - last payment was June 2009.

Still! There must be some error! I leap immediately to my bank statements.

OK, there’s the payment in June. Let’s try July…um, nothing. August?..Oh, shit.

Yeah, nothing whatsoever. But they must have screwed up! I must check my history on their website!

…fairly typical charges every month since then, plus a smallish late fee every time.

Shit. It’s entirely on me. I simply haven’t been paying the bill; I’m fucked.

So I paid the beast off (and I honestly feel guilty about it - this looks, from my perspective, to be entirely my fault. I’ve been screwing the utility on payments, so I didn’t even call to complain. It’s my stupidity.)

But why, oh why, didn’t they send me a warning? A notice? I was 9 months behind, they didn’t threaten to cut me off? What is going on? If I was them I would have cut the gas 3 months after no payment. I scoured my physical and electronic mail - no warnings, just a clockwork “You have a new bill!” in my email every month. No threats. No warnings. Just, “Whelp, you didn’t pay last month, but no big deal! Here’s your old bill plus new charges!”

I’m an idiot, I concede. I’m just very curious why my idiocy was tolerated for so long by the company.

I’m paid in full now (and that hurt, as it should). I shudder to think what it’s done to my credit rating. Up until now, my credit rating has been pristine. I’m talking 790s, and I know, because I bought my place just a year ago. I wonder how long it will take to recover?

Damn I’m a fool.

2

Great that you caught that! I’m surprised that they didn’t cut you off too, but maybe it’s because it’s winter and they’re required to provide you heat? I don’t know. . . like you say, I would have thought they would have cut you off after the second late bill, not wait until after the 9th.

3

Yeah, me too. My solution was to get married. That also took care of my Christmas shopping for life.

I think it’s probably this:

Plus that it’s probably illegal to shut off someone’s gas, at least in winter.

4

Not sure. I’ve never lived on my own anywhere with a gas bill, but if it’s like my power bill, the late fee was minuscule. I could have saved pennies by paying every other month because the stamp and envelope cost more than the late fee. I flat out forgot to pay it once :smack: and was surprised.

5

You probably didn’t get a warning/threatening letter because:

  1. Your bill during the summer (July-August-September) was probably quite small. They often don’t bother sending such letters for bills less than a certain amount.
  2. Since then, the amount you owe has become much larger over winter. But most states have rules that prevent utility cutoffs during winter months. You probably would have been cut off very soon after April 1st.
6

Yeah, but I “quit” paying after June 2009. There are laws against shutting off the gas where I live (Chicago burbs) in winter, but not in September, AFAIK.

7

This is a good argument for balancing your checkbook/accounts every month, especially if you pay a lot of bills electronically.

Or at least keep a checklist of your e-payments and check them off as they come due/are paid.

8

Well, you now own a home, so that will help your credit rating a hell of a lot anyway - you shouldn’t worry unduly about that.

It is odd that they didn’t send you a reminder. Even if they weren’t allowed to cut you off, that doesn’t mean they weren’t allowed to send you a reminder. Perhaps contact them to ask why, to satisfy your curiosity if nothing else?

9

I’m curious about this part too. I bought a car yesterday, and in the past week have learned that a. I have a negative on my credit report that I shouldn’t since I have proof I paid that $40 bill forever ago, and b. despite frequently forgetting to pay one of my student loans on time - the much smaller one with only a $1000 balance now - my credit score is still 790. I’ve been told that student loans don’t “count” on a credit score as much as other bills, so I don’t know what this real-er bill will do to the OP’s credit.

By gas I assume the OP means natural gas. How does that work - is there a storage tank, or is it piped in from some remote location? Our heat/dryer/stove are all propane, and we have a large tank in the yard that is filled as needed. I know for a fact that we don’t get deliveries every month, or even every other, during the months that we’re not using the heat because the stove and dryer just don’t use that much. If natural gas is like that too, isn’t it possible that the OP isn’t as deliquent on their bill as it might seem? I can picture going from June to maybe October or November without needing a propane delivery, so…still not great, but better than being 8 months behind.

10

If it’s natural gas, it’s piped in.

11

I’m not 100% certain, but reasonably sure that most utility companies do not report to the credit bureaus, so I doubt your credit score will take any hit at all.

12

Mine “proudly” states on their website that they do. Whether they do remains to be seen. I’ll probably wait a few months then get a credit report.

13

Yes - there is pretty significant underground pipeline infrastructure in North American cities for this purpose.

14

Heh, I did a similar thing. Or even stupider. I think there came a point when my mind just shut down about all the technicalities of moving and I was SO sure I had sorted all things out. In fact there were two that I had not sorted out, and one was electricity. So one fine day, I got a demand for approx. £650. Panic and oh shit for a couple of days till I could even bring myself to 'phone them. Horrible humble phone calls explaining “no I am not ringing to complain, dreadfully sorry and it is all my fault, and so on”. :slight_smile: Gave them a meter reading and had them send someone so they would know it was also read by one of their own official people and all that. It was a relief to find that the actual sum required was a lot less than the first suggestion (even though that was tricky to pay), but it WAS, on reflection a bit odd that they had carried on happily for six months before hitting me with this big bill. Strange. Time was they would send out scary red reminders at the drop of a hat.

15

I’ve got a bill story.

At one point, I paid any bills pretty much as soon I got em. My electric was sent out nearly a month before it was due. I paid it right away every time.

Then one time I did not. I got this big, scary looking, “have you paid your bill yet, wheres our money?!” kinda bill in the mail. Got me a little worried. Figured they had lost last months payment or something. Then, upon careful review, I realized I STILL had a week to go before it would be overdue.

So, basically I got a warning that I might be late.

16

Gas companies are weird about asking for money. We found out we’d been paying the wrong gas company in our old flat, for an entire year. We only found this out because several months after we moved, a debt collector rang us chasing payment. No reminders, requests for money, or anything thing else had ever been sent to us… We did check, assuming that the gas company weren’t confusing us with someone else - given that it had been a year, etc, etc. No, turns out the company we were paying had been charging us happily for someone else’s account. They refunded us, the real gas company’s bill was lower, so we came out ahead financially.

But the complete lack of communication for an entire year still baffles me. Surely, after a couple of months - even 6 months - you should send something saying “hi, we’re your gas company. Why aren’t you paying us?”. So it’s not just your gas company that’s remarkably lax about collecting money owed!

17

I like this advice, and do something very similar. I have a little spreadsheet with all my e-payments, and when the money leaves, I mark the date on the spreadsheet. It makes it really easy to see at a glance 1) what has and has not been paid; and 2) when the remaining bills are going to be leaving the account, so it’s easier to get a handle on cash flow.

Of course, it took me a mistake similar to the OPs to decide to set up such a system. It’s really easy to forget a bill when you assume everything is being taken care of through e-payments.

18

This is so true about gas/electric bills. It’s almost like they are saying: Would you mind terribly much, when you get around to it, no hurry, if maybe you could pay your bill? Pretty please?

My municipal water/sewer/trash on the other hand is more like: If you are even 1 minute late paying your bill, not only will we cut off your water and cause your toilet to overflow we will also take your first born.