I’m NOT Just A Bill

I’m NOT Just A Bill

Ah, the budget billing plan from LIPA.  It brings you the security of knowing your monthly fleecing.  But obviously LIPA is a necessary evil, and we all have to pay the Ferryman one way or another.

Now, if you are not familiar with the budget billing plan from LIPA, it is a fixed amount you pay each month.  The recipe they use to come up with a payment amount is a dab of your “past bills”, with a pinch of “overall average usage”, finally sprinkled with a little “whatever the fuck they want to charge you”.

Of course the lack of trust by LIPA makes them visit your house quarterly anyway, to insure your budget is on…budget.  If your meter should read less, they do not always lower your monthly budget payment.  I can’t say they are so forgiving when your meter is higher.  Then, at the end of your billing year cycle, you receive a final bill that will consist of your difference from actual usage to paid budget.

For two people our monthly nut is a little high… with my need to hang meat in the house in the summer, create a giant bathtub in our backyard in the spring and fall plus me trying to out-Griswold Clark himself in the winter.  Of course LIPA not knowing this would think I was housing Oct-o-mom and her brood.  However, each year we manage to come in under budget and get a credit.  This is a direct result of me turning into my Mom…with such top ten hits as “Are we trying to air condition the whole neighborhood” and “Do we need to be seen from space?”…Imagine if I DID have kids!

Sadly as it seems, budget refund day has become my new Christmas morning.  I nervously wait outside for the mailman and his eight reindeer to pull up to my house (I think I saw Mommy kissing the mailman, but that’s a story for another day!).  As he drove out of sight, I rushed to the mailbox like it was O’ Tannenbaum itself.   I sifted through the various other gifts labeled for my siblings, Occupant and Resident, until I found my version of a Red Ryder carbine-action, two hundred shot Range Model air rifle.  I rushed back to the house to unwrap my gift…to see how NICE I was this past year.  My eyes quickly scanned to the spot that holds the magic number like I was holding a PowerBall ticket.

The winning number is….  You Owe:  $3,500.

They shot my eye out kid…

 This had to be a mistake, how could this be?  Then I recall swimming outside in October while it was snowing with steam rising off the lagoon…Maybe I was a NAUGHTY boy!

Still, this HAD to be a mistake!  I turned over the bill, the part where no man has gone before.   I looked at our quarterly readings posted in Hieroglyphics.  Not having an advanced degree in dead languages it made this task quite cumbersome.  However, I did notice one of these things was not like the other (one of these things doesn’t belong).

Seemed our last quarter usage was 1.21 Jigawatts.  I grumbled something about “wrong guy” and me being “Michael J. WALSH”…

I was able to decipher the number of my last meter reading.  I checked it against our meter…it was not EVEN close.  I dialed LIPA’s customer service armed with this knowledge, angered at how they ruined my Christmas morning.  I fully expected to get Peggy.  Surprisingly, the agent I got was actually good and all business.  I checked twice to see if I dialed the right number.  I told her my tale of woe, the long version, not the Readers Digest one I posted here.  I could tell she wanted to interrupt and get me to the point, but I wanted my $3,500 worth.  At the end, she simply asked “what does the meter read now?”.  I responded and she came back with “Ok, you will see the changes on your next bill”.  Wait, that’s it?  I wasn’t done here!

Now, I did not want to crucify the meter reader for making a mistake, we all make them.  Plus, it may not have been their fault.  Maybe someone reading his or her report or someone typing it in made an error.  My issue was: Why didn't ANYONE at LIPA notice the fact that my monthly bill went up a whopping 1,000% plus and maybe perhaps LIPA should question it or check if it were a mistake before sending out the bill.  This is when I was informed of a disturbing fact.  I was told that LIPA does not question these types of spikes in billing, but Homeland Security DOES.  My lack of ability to form a response finally gave her the break she was looking for, “Thank you for calling LIPA, have a nice day”.

Now for any normal person, of whom I am far from, being put on the radar of Homeland Security would not be an issue.  It would however be an issue if say, perhaps, you were already on the Country's “No Fly” list.  Don’t ask me how I wound up there; obviously they were not profiling that day.  Ok, no time to panic.  I am sure there is nothing to worry about…not like there is anything else to make me look like a security risk.  At that moment I just happened to look down at my recent amazon.com purchase.  Yep, you got it…Microsoft Flight Simulator…2 AND 3.  I wonder how the weather at Guantanamo Bay is this time of year.

For the following weeks I twitched anytime I saw someone with sunglasses or a dark blue windbreaker.  Everyone was Agent Smith.  How could one simple mistake send me from Christmas to Crisis. The paranoia finally dissipated when the new bill arrived from LIPA.  I chuckled when I saw the updated amount owed.

You Owe:  $6.66

Only fitting when dealing with Devil…