Hilarity ensues

A couple of weeks ago I got a bill from the electric company for an unusually large sum of money, especially considering we've never lived in the house we're being billed for. Upon reading the fine print, I discovered that in lieu of sending people out to read the meters, which is understandably impractical, our friends at Entergy are billing customers for August based on prior years' use during that time of year. Never mind that we didn't live in our house last year and for all we know the previous owners air conditioned it to 60 degrees all August. I could understand their method, but that due to the renovations going on before Katrina, there hasn't been electrical service at the house since June.

I tried to get through on the customer service line to explain that the estimated billing is not appropriate to our case, but every time I called the message said there would be a minimum of a 30 minute wait, and I'm just not that patient. Finally I emailed them my info, and surprisingly enough, got a reply the next day. Here it is:

Thank you for your inquiry. Because we are unable to get a reading, the billing will remain the estimated amount. If you are able to provide a reading, we will be more than happy to adjust the billing per your reading. The bill below shows we only charged 59.00 for usage incurred. The billing appears extra high due to the increase of the fuel adjustment rate due to the high market cost of fuel. Entergy does not profit in this line item.

Soooo. $59 for what I allegedly used, plus another hundred-something for fuel adjustment? That doesn't even make sense. More importantly, my Entergy friend could probably have seen in my file that our house has a DIGITAL METER. That means if there is no power I CAN'T READ IT.

WTF? There isn't even a line connecting the meter to the house. I just hope they don't report me to TRW, because I am so not paying this bill. What are they going to do, cut off the power to my TRAILER? I'm ][ this close to going off-grid and buying some solar panels to put on the trailer, if we ever get a key to open it, that is.

In other news, we took advantage of Louisiana's sales tax free weekend today to buy a couple of new refrigerators for Chateau Danneel. Our tenants will be able to chill their beers amply when they come back for the spring semester.