Electric....

When we arrived in Wellington almost two years ago we secured a little apartment and soon realized that the electric bill would be taking a considerable chunk out of our take home pay each month. Or at least it seemed like more than what it should cost to run a teeny, tiny studio. We did look into the matter and had our bill adjusted a couple times. Admittedly, we wondered if they were trying to pull something over on us - like adding some of a previous tenants unpaid bill. In short, we weren't sure what was happening and had bills fluctuating wildly over the months we lived there. 

Then, a little over a year ago we moved to a slightly larger studio in the same complex. And what do you know? Our electric bill skyrocketed and we contacted the power company. Sure enough they said an error had been made and our bill was adjusted. We even requested that an electrician come out and turn out hot water heater down. Not even halfway up the dial you'd get scalded if you weren't paying attention when you jumped in the shower. However, even after these adjustments we continued to have a power bill that just seemed too high. This all came to a head when we left for our month long Europe trip this past September. Before we left we turned off all the outlet switches and even emptied and unplugged the fridge. We also switched everything off at the breaker and you would guess that this would take the subsequent bill down to almost nothing. Wrong again! After returning home I remember seeing the bill come through in an email and opening it anxiously to see a tiny sum due. Yeah. I kid you not, the bill was higher than any bill we had received since we moved in. What?! We then went on to send several incredulous email inquires to figure out what was happening. It was several weeks later that we received a response to the effect that they had not received earlier messages because they had changed their esoteric "contact us" section of the website. Sigh. We were less than thrilled. Then our account was put on hold so they could look into the matter. But not that week because, you know, they were in the middle of a billing period and it would have to wait. 

A couple weeks later I was sitting in the office when I received an email to say that when the electrician went to visit our apartment and check the meter wires had been crossed and our unit had been hooked up to S107 (we are S107A, the studio next door)!!! In the end we had been getting their bill and they had been getting ours. And since their unit is a significantly larger one bedroom it's no wonder that our bill had been so high.

I am happy to say that a few days later we received our next bill with the corrected rates for the entire 16 months we have lived in S107A. We weren't sure how it would all shake out but I was ecstatic to see that we had a $700+ credit which is no surprise as we had overpaid for over a year. So here's to not having to pay a power bill for a few months. :)