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High Gas Bills: Double Surprise For Some Century Residents
February 4, 2010
Some Century Town Gas Department customers are getting a double surprise with their January bills.
Bills that recently arrived in mailboxes around the town include the two weeks with sub-freezing lows, and that has led to increased bills. But for some customers, the bills are also higher than normal because their billing cycle was as long as 42 days due to meter problems.
A Century gas bill normally includes gas used over 30 or 31 days. But due to difficulties reading the town’s electronic meters, some customers’ bills reflect 42 days of usage.
Resident Helen Mincy saw her normal $15 a month bill increase fourfold to almost $60. She told the town council that she only used her gas heat three days during the cold weather and that she could not understand why her bill was so high.
For Robert Mitchell, his bill jumped from about $150 to nearly $300 — partially due to the cold and partially due to the 42 day billing cycle.
“I’m ready to tear them out,” Mayor Freddie McCall said of the town’s electronic gas meters. “We got a bum installation.”
A town employee should only need to drive by an electronic meter while the meter reading appears automatically on a laptop computer. However, the mayor said the systems has been nothing but problematic, leading some to have the 42 day billing cycle last month. He said he has tried multiple times to rectify the situation with the manufacturer of the meters, but so far there is no solution.
“I am ready to tear them out and hire a meter reader,” McCall said.
Comments
11 Responses to “High Gas Bills: Double Surprise For Some Century Residents”
Century.
That free gas maybe why it’s ex-mayor. I sort of kinda think that the new mayor would stop that.
I wonder if the ex mayors son still gets free gas. Was that ever taken care of?
I don’t think that Century is the only town having problems with those electronic meters.
The mayor or gas division employees have no control over a situation where the product is defective.
The previous poster was correct in saying that it should have “evened out” because while one billing cycle is longer, there will be on that is 12 days shorter. The bottom line is that the usage being billed for is correct. Nobody has been overbilled. Having said that, I’m sure there is a way that the city can prorate those extra 12 days to be due with the next months bill. This way it would not be such a burden on the folks whose billing cycle was longer this past month.
maybe I shoud swap over to gas form electric my electric bill went up last month form $406.00 to $617.00 although alot of that when I called about it was gas surge charge its ashame that you can’t write it off on your taxes….wonder how much of it was for them reading the meter??
What ya’ll complaining about, my electric bill was $500.00 this past month. My meter reader never gets out either. He does use binoculars.
If your meter was read early, the previous months bill should have been smaller due to a shorter billing period, thus it all works out in the end.
This excused doesn’t fly for me. The meters were read early not late mine was read on December 14, and again on January 25. First I was told they were read early because of the holidays. That’s fine, but why didn’t they come back and read the meters around January 15th, not wait until the 25th especially after the cold weather when they knew everyones bill would already be high from the record length cold spell. That’s okay, I will remember to discuss it with the mayor and council members again as well as the people in Century. When will I discuss it with them, when they come around with their hand out saying the three magic words, “vote for me”.
How do they end up with a 42 day billing cycle? It sounds like the town is not doing due diligence with reading the meters in a timely manner. It would seem that if there’s a problem, the town would work overtime in correcting it.
We had a “meter reader” before…he either couldn’t read or wouldn’t get out of the truck and just guessed LOL if it wasn’t so serious!
I wish I had a $60 gas bill. Wanna trade?