The $1900 Gas Bill
OMG, your girl’s stupid! 🤦🏼♀️ …But in the most Sunny way possible! 🙃
The other day, I got my e-bill from Enbridge, the gas company & just about ate my tongue bc it was $1900! For 1 month! 🙀 The month before, it was $900, which seemed unreasonably excessive, but would have been about the right amount if I missed a winter payment, which seemed possible. Unlikely bc I pay my bills religiously as soon as they come in, like Blake taught me, but it was *possible* that I missed an e-bill at some point among the 50 billion receipts, shipment tracking & mailing list e-mails I get a day. It was also possible gas prices had gone up, that was a thing people complained about, right? Plus, my furnace came with the house 20 years ago & badly needs to be upgraded & pretty much every window needs weatherproofing or full replacement, so maybe this $900/month gas bill was just my new reality, was what I thought. So I paid it! Then I had a serious talk with Harold about either buying a new house or investing time, money, energy & love into this one!
When this month was more than double AGAIN, it sent me into my 1st true panic attack in 3 years! I know this bc my Apple watch gave me a high heart rate alert! My usual 60 bpm resting heart rate skyrocketed to 120 bpm! Tears & snot everywhere!
This was my biggest nightmare, that I’d fuck up adulting somehow – even tho I try so hard! – & that my bills would get ahead of me & I’d have to have a real grownup with more resources (aka mom) bail me out.😭 A $1900 gas bill didn’t put me there, but a $1900/*month* gas bill would sink me fast.
Between teary eyes & tissues, I managed to get logged into the Enbridge website & printed out my last 4 bills, which were multiple pages long, so I also stapled each month together. I had no idea Enbridge gave me actual itemized BILLS until that moment, I thought the e-mail WAS my bill! 😟 The more I studied them, the more confused & panicked I became bc the totals owing were still plain as day, 1/2 the size of the 1st page of the bill, you couldn’t miss them! They said “total owing”, “-$900” & “-$1900”!
Finally, a living puddle of my own leaking emotional fluids, I figured my options were to either ask Harold to take a look, because it made absolutely no sense to me, or try to compose myself enough to call customer service. I decided it was NOT co-dependent to at least let Harold take a look at the bills I printed before I unleashed ALL THIS *gestures wildly @ self* on some poor, unsuspecting customer service rep.
Harold put on his reading glasses, looked at the bills & listened while I pleaded my innocence, mumbling Rainman shit to himself, running his index finger down the figures on each page. He repeated the process 3 times, scratched his head & said, “it doesn’t make sense, but we’ll figure this out” & dove back into the paperwork, this time armed with a pen.
After studying the bills for a few minutes and doing some math, he said “hmmm, what is this “CR” beside the totals?”That’s when he realized that at some point in April they credited me around $600, shortly after they installed my new gas meter.
As it turned out, when I got my bill in June & it said “total owing -$900”, there was a tiny “CR” beside it meaning “credit”. So when I thought I *owed* $900 & paid $900, it actually gave me a credit of $1800 & change. I didn’t *owe* $1900, I had a fucking credit! 🤦🏼♀️ Why THE FUCK would they word their bills like that? They scared me half to death! What a bunch of assholes!
So, I guess I don’t have to pay my gas bill for a while. 🤷🏼♀️ I can also rest assured that I did not fuck up my bills, I am not going to lose my home & that panic attack was wholly unnecessary! 😅
