Got a phone call last night from Tri saying that the gas meter at the Ministry Center was missing and that the gas was turned off and there was NO heat! Somehow, we need gas to have heat with a gas furnace!
After a couple phone calls to Sharp Energy and speaking with their answering service... only to discover that their 24 hour service wouldn't help our situation, there was nothing to do but wait until morning.
8 a.m. I was on the phone calling Sharp Energy, only to find out after about 15 minutes that they aren't in charge of our gas line... I needed to call Chesapeake Utilities... but they didn't open til 9 or so I was told. I tried the number and lo-- someone answered and after 45 minutes of talking and being on hold while Michelle checked things out, we got things worked out! They indeed come by on Monday and disconnect (take) our gas meter. NO phone call, No letter. Just a disconnect. Didn't matter that it is winter and pipes might freeze. Didn't matter that we might show up on Sunday and not have heat!
I know, it is partly our fault.... we should have called to switch the account into our name when we bought the property in May, but who was thinking about heat then. And when we went to turn on the heat, there was no lock on the meter, so we assumed wrongly that everything was okay.... until the meter was taken!
The only way to get things going again...was to take a $350 deposit there and then they would schedule the service tech to install the meter again. So, I took a personal check over, because it would cost an extra fee to use a credit card. If I wanted it turned on today, it would cost an extra $75. Otherwise to turn it on tomorrow it would be free! But the next time we were illegally using the gas, it would cost us $30 to turn on whenever.
Now, I really objected to Michelle's "illegal use" term... it's not like we were trying to get something for nothing! It's a simple mistake on our part that if we had made one phone call, it would have avoided the whole mess... and if they had bothered to call to say, they detected usage on a service that was shut off and locked out in May, we could have solved the whole thing much more simply! It appears that someone cut the lock off...none of us did... or maybe there wasn't one... don't know. I think they were flabbergasted when I asked to speak to the manager to make sure that we would get a bill for the last month... after all we do owe them for whatever gas we used!
Wow, what one simple phone call could have avoided! I am glad this is behind us and that we now have everything set up in our name. And glad that it wouldn't cost us anything to have it re-installed and that after 12 months of good payment record, we will get out $350 back!
What a learning!
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