Billed Out!

Bills.

Electricity bill.

The one bill I've always taken for granted. I don't have any reasonable explanation for it but I somehow thought when it comes to electricity I'd never 'run out' of.

This morning dawns on our land, sunny and breezy. A typical summer morning. One feels refreshed as soon as one gets up from bed. No grogginess. No grumpiness. An emerging smile on your face when you look up at the clear sky.

Everything would be ok today. That's what I was telling myself. Until Mister H informed me that the electricity engineers are outside to disconnect our supply. Last week a payment was effected and there was no notice about the disconnection. Last Sunday we received the amount due for this month (even I don't understand how they operate) and the last date of payment is up today, the 11th of September 2009.

The day is not over yet and already the engineers are here to turn our heaven into hell. Before the clock strikes 10 a.m.

On the phone with them, we learned, for the first time, that we have arrears for last month. I was baffled because how can you have arrears when you're paying, full charges, every month? It's a new policy which, supposedly, states that as soon as customers enter the arrear mode their power supply get cut off. Immediately! No prior warning. No nothing.

Mister H, very calmly and ever so polite, told the phone operator he would pay whatever he needs to pay to get back the current. He, in turn, was gently reminded that he WOULD HAVE TO PAY a reconnection fee and everything would be back on AFTER 4 p.m. Which is not a certainty. It's a 'probably'.

Now, sitting here, in deep thought, I'm wondering about the motive of the electricity board. Is it a new method of 'extorting' money out of regular customers?

That pushed me into bunching up all the payments effected and bills received from them. All I need to do now is to analyse every piece of money we gave them. And find out if really we got arrears!