Dear Mr/s TRU Energy
(if that even is your real name),
It has now been two
years since we first contacted you about getting billed for our gas usage at XX XXXXXXXXXXXXX, Collingwood 3066. We aren’t writing to you because we don’t
think we should have to pay you anything (after all, we contacted you, not the other way around), it’s
that we only want to pay what is fair. In the two years we have been pursuing
this matter we have variably been quoted bills ranging from a few hundred
dollars to $4889.63. Indeed, on June 12 2012 we were issued with a gas account for $1040.25 (based on an estimated meter reading), including the deduction of
just a tick under $4000 from the ‘Opening Balance’. I have no idea how you
arrived at this figure, but I have no choice but to trust that you know what
you are doing.
But then, with the due
date of this bill approaching, we receive another letter from you stating that
you have “fixed this now and your bills will be sent to you within the next 10
days”. As I’m sure you can appreciate, we put the previous bill aside and
waited expectantly for, after 2 years of phfaphfing around, this whole saga to
draw to an end.
But alas, no. What
should arrive in the mail this evening (26 July 2012) but a bill for $2,888.12?
Oh no. Surely there must be some mistake. You promised this was all going to be
resolved soon, but this charade just seems to go on and on and on.
But, I am nothing if
not an optimist. I foresee a light at the end of the purgatorial tunnel and we
can finally get out of this holding pattern of painfully mixed metaphor and
resolve this debacle. For you see, this new bill also contains details of what are
supposedly the previous three bills, so we have an ongoing record of exactly
how much gas we are supposed to have used, and in which months we used it. For
instance, in April/May 2012 we used 24.82Mj of gas per day (2098.11Mj). In
Feb/March 2012 we used 34.39Mj of gas per day (1489.79Mj). Included was also a
bill for June/July 2012 for 3.85Mj of gas used per day, but I’m prepared to
disregard this figure as we moved out of this address early in June.
So, from February to
June 2012 we demonstrably used a grand total of 3587.9Mj of gas. At your usage
charge for this period of $0.014715/Mj, plus your supply charge of $32.24 for 2
months, this works out to be $117.28 for 4 months worth of normal gas usage. If
anything, that seems even less than what an average couple could expect to pay
for 4 months of gas. After all, if the amount of something you are actually
using is less than the service, you’re probably doing alright.
But, clearly, $117.28
<< $2888.
So what should be
there, taking up so much space in the bar chart on page 3? Oh wait, that’s
supposedly our gas usage for Dec 2011- Jan 2012, weighing in at an astonishing
57 times greater than our usage for the very next period of Feb/March 2012. 57
TIMES! That’s 1974.82Mj! That’s $27.38! PER! DAY! OMG! WTF!
Oh wait, silly me. I
forgot that was the period in which I converted our gas system into a
flamethrower and started operating a hot air ballooning business out of our
kitchen! /sarc
Now here I should
probably take a detour and mention that some 18 months after initially making
contact with you to send us our gas bill, you finally arranged for a meter
reader to come to our house one fine sunny Saturday morning in early summer
2011. The gas meter is, for some reason known only to the owner, buried
inside a wall. It is located in the corner behind a kitchen bench, and a layer
of plasterboard is nailed in place to cover it. Only while laying cockroach
baits in darkened recesses did we happen to stumble across it. And yet as long
as it took us to find it, it somehow took you even longer to come around and
read it so that you could get paid the money you rightly earned by connecting
and supplying gas to our humble, rented abode.
So before December
2011, the gas usage that you claim we used is nothing more than an estimate
based upon what I can only imagine to be average usage figures for similar
sized homes in similar areas. But even a casual parsing of the bar charts that
accompany each bill show that the average usage is far above what has been
demonstrated to be our actual usage, even when seasonally adjusted.
Now instead of getting
up on our high horses and demanding that we don’t have to pay a cent, or
threatening to go to the consumer ombudsman, or worse, Today Tonight, we are
prepared to try to strike a compromise.
What we propose is as
follows:
We are prepared to pay
for 9 months of gas, as is our obligation “under government regulations that
apply in your state”.
We will pay at the
same rate as you had calculated for the period Feb-May 2012. That is
$0.014715/Mj.
The same service fee
per billing period ($32.24 for every 2 months) will be paid.
Our usage is to be
calculated at 50Mj per day, a figure significantly higher than our highest rate
of actual usage (34.39Mj/day for Feb/March 2012).
Now if my calculations
were correct, that would be 50Mj/day multiplied by 274 days equals 13,700Mj of
gas used.
13,700Mj multiplied by
$0.014715 equals $201.60 in gas usage.
Service fee of
$32.24/2 months. $32.24 times 4.5 is $145.08.
$201.60 plus $145.08
equals $346.68.
Let’s be generous and
make it a rounded $350, payable in a lump sum.
Let us know if you agree.
