Jason Reed | |
Electric Company says I owe 9 months' pay |
11/26/2008 |
I have a credit card that I pay all my bills with. I've set up automatic payments with each of my bills and then once a month I pay off my credit card, effectively turning several bills into one. Well, just the other day, I received my electricity bill from EPUD in the mail stating that I owe $503 and it will be paid by Auto-Pay. WTF? It said it was due to NSF (non-sufficient funds). I looked on my October (last month) bill and there was no mention of it at all. It was only for that month's electricity. The same with my previous bills. I looked on my credit card statement and, sure enough, there were no entries for EPUD after March. Well, they don't have to know that. Besides, I haven't gotten any notices or anything that they haven't been paid until now. Normally they'd shut off my electricity after a couple months.
So, I called them up and said there was a problem with my bill. The woman seemed familiar with my account. She said that their books were short and Accounting, after many months, finally discovered the problem. It was with the 3rd party company that supplied the auto-pay feature on their site. The 3rd-party company was reporting to EPUD that they were being paid each month from me, but EPUD wasn't receiving my money because they don't have an account with Discover, which is the brand of my credit card. The 3rd party company accepted Discover and didn't know that EPUD didn't. So, once they figured out the problem, they added all the charges to my account. I tried telling her that my Discover statement showed the money being taken out (which it actually did for 2 of the months), and she said that I should call them, then, since I might get that money returned to me since it didn't go to anyone. She wouldn't budge on anything and even seemed hesitant letting me do a payment plan on it. Meanwhile, I view it as their mistake that cost them money. I see it as, "Sorry you guys lost money. Mistakes in Accounting will do that. Glad to hear you got it all worked out. I'll gladly change over to my VISA and pay you from now on, but I shouldn't have to make up for your mistake." What is everyone's take on this? Is there any way I can get out of paying for the money their Accounting department lost? |