This was a dream come true yesterday. I did a little dance in the gas station.
I threw down $20 to put gas into my car since the little light came on alerting me that the engine was about to ground to a halt. No good.
I was at Safeway so I used my PowerPump Rewards to get 20 cents off. Yay me! So I paid $1.319 per gallon for gas. Whoo hoo!
The pump clicked off about 15 cents shy of $14. I used my excellent gas pumping skills to make it the "perfect pump" at $14 even. Then I did something that I haven't been able to do in years. I went back to the window and got my CHANGE!!! Incredible.
"It's a Christmas Miracle!" I exclaimed as I danced back to my car! Yahoo! Change at the gas station! I'm used to scraping UP change to GIVE to the gas station. Like every single last nickel in my possession. Sometimes pennies.
This is a welcome change!
PS Sorry Amy, I like the low fuel prices :)
And I needed that boost of happiness too especially since I was threatened with arrest earlier that morning. Yeah. Arrest. As in go to jail, go directly to jail.
Long story short, our ass-backwards podunk water company came and locked off our water meter three weeks ago. We called the office confused since our bill wasn't due for another 10 days.
We worked out arrangements to pay down a HUGE balance, grown ever so large because they didn't send us a single water bill for almost THREE YEARS then sent a huge one over the summer for three years worth of service. Sigh. Then we tried to call the ONE AND ONLY person who turns on and off water for the company. His phone was ringing right to voicemail and the voicemail was full. We left callback numbers about eight times. He never called back. Finally we just snipped the metal ring that locked the water off (not the lock, the ring) and turned the water back on ourselves. We told the one and only gal who does the billing for the company that we had done this and we thought it was over.
The guy NEVER called us back at all in the next three weeks. Noone from the company called us at all.
Cut to about 11:45 yesterday morning. The jerky water guy and a sheriffs deputy are at my house. Apparently clipping the ring is a felony and we're all gonna go to jail. I'm trying to bring Elizabeth to school. It's 40 degrees outside. I have to explain the WHOLE situation with the water company to the deputy. He keeps telling me that he's gonna arrest me and take my kids away. Sigh.
The water jerk shut our water off again while he was out there and I threw a FIT. We paid our payment this month!!
He just about called me a liar and laughed in my face. I called him an ass. Then I called the billing gal. She said, and I quote: "I show your payment right here, and you're set to pay again on the first. I DON'T KNOW WHY HE'S OUT THERE SHUTTING OFF YOUR WATER"
So he's a water vigilante I guess. Or he's just an ass with nothing better to do but harass me.
It took about a half hour but I was finally able to get the jerk to turn the water back on and I got the sheriff to quit threatening my imminent arrest and the kids and I left for school, leaving the whole sordid mess behind.
Whew.
Good times.
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7 comments:
That whole story left me very stressed out. Sorry you had to deal with it. :(
I was stressed out for HOURS afterward...like until I fell asleep.
It was not fun.
Wow. You should put that story in a letter to the paper. That's a horrible abuse of power.
How did they know you snipped the ring? Because your water started coming back?
I love how cheap gas is right now too! I was going to compare your water story to our our insurance company ignoring my pleas to settle with the hospital for Drew's surgery 6 months ago. I just found out the hospital sent us to collections even though I have money I want to give them, if they could just figure out the bill! But, so far no one has tried to arrest me, so your story wins.
We think the guy came out to read the meter, discovered that we snipped the ring and got the sheriff involved without calling the billing gal to find out what was going on, aka that he's a jerk off.
This "company" is totally jacked by the way.
They run the billing out of someone's house and I have NO idea how the guy in charge of turning on and off service starting "working" for them or even continues to work for them when he goes around shutting off water willy-nilly.
The "offices" used to be in Tempe, which is like 200 miles away.
There is no local office and when you call you are calling someone's home or private cell phone. It's ridiculous. No public utility should be run this way, where people come out to disconnect your service on a Sunday and then just DO NOT answer calls to restore service, like ever. I'm secretly WISHING they'd press charges against us because I KNOW I can beat them in court...with my Law and Order training on my side and all.
Your blog is a gem! Seriously, I laughed out loud! You get some good material for being in the middle of nowhere! Of course, to your detriment at times, but hopefully you look back and laugh!
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