A coworker actually was talking about rigging his meter, I don't know what all that entails but he was pretty confident on how to do it and not getting caught.
Not if they can't figure out how to bill you under no wrongdoing of your own, especially when you have already alerted them to it once. If it were me and I had called to find out why they hadn't been billing me, I may just have to laugh it off if they still couldn't figure out how to correctly bill me.
It's not a gift, it's a mistake...and he didn't alert them that it's STILL a mistake, only that there was something up before they were getting meter reads. But you're right, it's under no wrongdoing of his own...but in my opinion it becomes stealing once you realize the problem and don't do anything about it.
Juan Valdez Knows not of what he speaks. He is actually quite foolish. He works for crooks and is singing the company line. Centerpoint reads the meters EVERY MONTH and you are billed on their readings. They estimate on meters they cannot get to for differrent reasons and still cannot let you go more than 2 months without an actual reading. This is Centerpoint policy. I know since I work for them. Reliant, Gupa, TXU, and all the others are crooks making money off of nothing. Centerpoint and Tex/New Mex are still getting theirs but now you have a middle man coming in and taxing the **** out of you for sending your bill and nothing else. So what you use to pay 8 cents a kilowatt for, you are now paying 14-21 cents a kilowatt for. Just go and look at the cities that are still regulated and see what they pay a kilowatt. De-regulation and the people who voted for it are foolish. Did people actually think Centerpoint and TX/MX were going to drop their rates and lose money so other companies could come in and make a profit? No, they still charge the same, but now their is a middle man getting a cut, which in turn leads to much higher bills for the consumer. I say ride the wave as long as you can, at most you will get 1 higher than normal bill, since a reading to far out of wack will not even register on the meter readers computer. It is done on averages throughout the years on a particular month. So if you average 2000 KWS in December, it will not except 3000. It will reject the reading. Pretty much every Centerpoint, TEX/MEX employee starts as a reader and works their way up. This is common knowledge to anyone in the field. Pay no attention to the crooks wanting to make a fortune to send you a bill, or their puppets toting the company line
And while we are on the de-regulation talk. Do you know before the crooks got involved we would let you fall a month or 2 behind and before we cut you off, we would come to your door and give you a chance to pay? Now that is all gone and you have what 2 weeks, and even if you have the money in your hand the Tech has no choice but to shut you off until you pay the middle man. On top of that, even if you have payed your bill, but the Tech has not recieved the reconnect they have to cut you off, even with a conformation number or reciept, and you have to pay the disconnect and reconnect fee's. They have totally taken the human compassion aspect out of it and made it a hard core business. They want to get you for every dime they can. They do not care about you or your families, only the allmighty dollar.
3814, Are you serious? He is stealing? Who is to say what he should be paying a month? He called them and told them of the problem and still got a lower than expected bill. Should he just send them $300 a month out of the goodness of his heart? If he lives in an apartment or small trailer those bills can be as low as $50 a month. If he lives in a mansion those bills can be $10,000 a month. It can be anywhere in between. He is not a provider. He doesn't know how many kilowatts he uses a month nor should he. He pays the bill he is sent and nothing more. What more should be expected of him? He alerted them of his suspicions, that is all he can do. Get off your high horse son, cause you sound pretty foolish.
It's not direct stealing per se (sounds harsh), but it's definitely a form of it. He's getting a service for free, he knows there's a problem, the provider isn't aware of the problem, and he's not telling them about it. Yes, he told them initially there was something wrong...but he didn't follow up after receiving the super-low bill. Regardless of how naive the company is acting, it is still taking something for free. You never know, maybe the employee he talked to on the phone didn't report the issue and quite later that day - you don't know. What you do know is that he's unintentionally getting something for free that he is supposed to be paying for - how is that not a form of stealing?
Upon further review my meter is broke. I went out there and it is still showin the same killowatt usage that was on my bill i received last week. I'm just gonna ride the gravy train until they catch it. I mean I paid a connection fee, and im paying monthly taxes and usage fees. Can they really expect the consumer to break down their bill and see where their mistakes are? Most people have no idea how to read their bill they just pay it. In my opinion I am doing nothing wrong because they are sending me a bill monthly and I pay it. Its not my responsibility to correct their mistakes!
There are a couple ways you can look at it. If you feel guilty, notify them. But keep this in mind; If you were being overcharged for a year and didnt realize it, they would NOT go back and correct it from day one. They would tell you that you would need to contest it from the beginning. Corporate America's rule is if you pay the bill, you agree with the charges. You're the customer. Your duty is to pay the bill, not to monitor or maintain any of their equipment.
To answer your original question, ask yourself what would YOU do if you were being overcharged every month?
Do nothing, save the money. If they try to make you pay, hammer them on estimated charges and pay way less. It's their own damn fault, and you already did the honest thing and called.
I think this is more defnitive than anything that has been posted in this thread (assuming you live in Texas): "If you were undercharged, you may be back-billed for no more than six months, unless the undercharges result from meter tampering or if the utility can produce documentation to justify the additional billing. If back-bills are greater than $50 you may ask for a deferred payment plan. If you do not pay, your service may be disconnected." This is from the Texas PUC web site.
What means would Centerpoint have of proof of usage if the meter is broke? Do they have a main meter upstream of the house drops that they could use? Perhaps prove that all the meters downstream of that are accurate and just subtract the difference to show his usage? I wouldn't just assume that they can't find a way to prove this if I were you. I had something similar happen to me in college but it was for long distance phone billing. Company was so disorganized that all the apartments in my complex never received bills for anything but local calling, even if you called freaking Jamaica on a regular basis. Eventually, this company was bought by someone else and that new company spent the time to look back over all the records and work out what everyone owed and we all got large bills. It sucked BIG time. I would call and tell them the meter is broke. If they don't fix it then, you can't do anything else. But I wouldn't risk it, were it me.
Does this mean fixing meters will be tougher? Regulators OK CenterPoint's plan for 'smart' meters http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6171677.html [rquoter]State regulators today approved CenterPoint Energy’s plan to deploy new “smart” electric meters throughout the Houston area over the next five years. That means customers will likely see an additional $3.24 on their monthly bills for two years beginning in February, dropping to $3.05 per month for 10 more years afer that.. The new meters can be monitored and controlled remotely, and will be able to communicate with a new generation of in-home devices that will give customers more information about their power usage and, ideally, help them change their habits so they’ll use less power. CenterPoint will assess the fee to retail electric providers, which will have the option of absorbing the cost or passing it on to consumers. The system is expected to cost about $640 million to deploy. The first meters will be installed in March, with 145,000 planned for 2009, 500,000 for 2010 and every year after until all 2.2 million customers in the CenterPoint area have the new units.[/rquoter]
