My mother who is a senior just got her bills every month and paid them. I am assuming that many people do this. STOP! Take the time to look at your bills because you may be getting charged for things that you did not order.
My mother was getting charged $30.00 a month for some "protection plan" that she did not order.
When contacting the utility company (electric) she was told that she ordered it when they came out on a service call last "SEPTEMBER". She informed them that there was no service call to her home last September. She was simply told that they would look in to it.
After not hearing from the company for 3 weeks, she called again and this time was told that the service call to her home in September was canceled, so no one came out, but that is when she ordered the "protection plan". Mind you, my mother may be a senior, but she is very active and very much aware of what is going on. She requested proof that she ordered it which they can not seem to provide and a refund of the charges that she has paid to date for a service that she did not order. She was told that it would be referred to their billing department for investigation.
Lets move to now, another 3 weeks later. Still nothing from the electric company. Not a phone call or a letter. She did call about a week ago and found out that the charge still has not stopped on her account and they advised her to pay the full amount due, even though it has the charges for the "protection plan" on it. She will of course only pay for the service that she has received.
This "protection plan" covers furnaces (she has a gas furnace), stoves (she has an old stove that is not worth protecting) and refrigerators (she has a new one with it's own warranty). Obviously, she wouldn't have ordered this, but because she did not check her bill thoroughly. she was paying an extra 30 bucks a month.
Look carefully because when she showed me the bill, I didn't even see the charge. It looked like a normal part of the bill. It's no wonder she couldn't figure out why her bills were so high.
Where we live, it is normal for the bills to start getting high in September, so she never gave it a second thought. BIG MISTAKE!
Always question why your bill is high, no matter what the season. Go over it with a fine tooth comb, so this kind of thing does not happen to you!
This, my friends, is how stuff works!
Update
After all this time the electric company finally took the charges off the bill and refunded what was paid to them for the plan. It took a letter to them, telling them that she wanted proof that she ordered this service and if they could not provide it, she wanted a refund. She also told them that she wanted a manager to call her.
They still never called to let her know what was going on. She only found out when her current bill arrived. At least it was fixed. I guess they are not much for customer service, but why should they be, they are the only company here.
Please read all of your bills thoroughly because all it takes is for someone to enter the phone number or account number incorrectly and you will end up having extra charges on your bill.
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