Know Your Place

On February 4^th I received the following email from everyone’s favorite energy company, PG&E, titled PGE Bill Adjustment.

 

Dear Valued Customer,

We are writing to let you know about a billing issue affecting your PG&E account number listed above. Your account was underbilled by $-1875.00. As part of our process, we review our billing operations to ensure that our customers are billed correctly, and during those reviews, we sometimes find a billing exception that may result in a bill adjustment.

 

If you recall – as my wife surely does – this summer I neglected to realize that our solar panel system breaker had tripped, causing our giant solar array to be nothing more than the world’s ugliest home improvement project for the hottest two and a half months of the year – possibly of the decade. This wonderful learning experience caused us to get a true-up bill this year that is so large it can be seen from space.

While PG&E is not willing to do anything crazy like print in bold at the top of your August bill, “HEY! YOU DIDN’T PRODUCE A SINGLE kWh LAST MONTH!”, they are willing to “work with you” after the fact in these breaker-tripping situations. They are graciously allowing me to pay them the true-up sum equal to the gross national product of Cuba in twelve equal payments with no interest.

Now, even though they know that they agreed to let me pay it over twelve months, they still list the gargantuan remaining total as my “bill amount” each month, as if I was in charge of lighting up lower Manhattan for the last thirty days.

So, since I’m used to seeing big numbers – numbers that don’t always fit on only one line of the bill – from them, when I received the above email, I didn’t fall directly out of my chair. I actually scoffed a little under my breath, like, “Is that all you got?”

Then I read it again and had to ask – myself, of course, not customer service… I mean, who can get a hold of those people? – what do you mean you “underbilled” my account by a negative number? Is that just a cute way of saying you overbilled me because you don’t want to actually say that?

And which is worse? Admitting you underbilled me or overbilled me? On the one hand, you look like you don’t know what you’re doing, but at least you get to take more of my money while I get even more frustrated and disappointed with you. On the other hand, you still look like an idiot, but I’m happier, but you have to give me money back. Tough call, there.

Then I thought about it more and laughed at myself for even thinking that through. This is PG&E. There’s no way they would ever admit they overbilled me! Ha ha ha. So silly.

Their nice email went on to say:

 

We have corrected the issue, and a bill adjustment will be reflected on your next statement. We apologize, and we are working to improve our billing system to prevent issues like this from affecting you in the future. You do not need to take any action at this time.

 

I guess you don’t HAVE to take any action at this time, but if your heart stopped working, or simply blew right out of your chest when you read their email, you may WANT to take some action involving dialing 9-1-1.

Anyway… on February 5^th – a whole day later – I received another email from them, entitled Correction to Previous eMail- PGE Bill Adjustment

 

Please disregard the previous email you received on February 4th 2025, regarding this bill adjustment.  The amount as stated was incorrect.  This notification contains the corrected bill adjustment for your account.  We apologize for any inconvenience.

Dear Valued Customer,

We are writing to let you know about a billing issue affecting your PG&E account number listed above. Your account was underbilled by $-18.75. As part of our process, we review our billing operations to ensure that our customers are billed correctly, and during those reviews, we sometimes find a billing exception that may result in a bill adjustment.

We have corrected the issue, and a bill adjustment will be reflected on your next statement. We apologize, and we are working to improve our billing system to prevent issues like this from affecting you in the future. You do not need to take any action at this time.

 

So, let me get this straight, PG&E… You are working to improve your billing system, but you just sent out an email to, I’m assuming, a crap-ton of people, with a cardiac-event-inducing decimal place error? I mean, decimal place is second-grade stuff, fellas! Sounds like things are going great with the billing system improvement project.

Also, PG&E, just so you all know, the fact that you are having large-scale decimal place errors in a large-scale bill adjustment process does NOT give us, your customers, a sense of security that you are correctly tallying up all the kilowatts we’re using and sending you.

In fact, it really makes me wonder why you’re so willing to extend me the grace of a no-interest payment plan. Is that because you’re just not 100% sure I really owe you all that money in the first place?

Maybe it’s time to get the State of California in there to check up on you guys and sort this all out? Getting the government involved should clear things right up, right?

Ha! Oh, man, I crack myself up sometimes!

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2025 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Give Me Your Money

I was browsing my way through the Yahoo headlines today, keeping abreast of the hard-hitting news items of the day, such as what dress Kim Kardashian was wearing inappropriately this week. (Abreast… get it?) Anyway, after I got done being outraged at the fact that a New York City traffic officer would have the unmitigated gall to give J Lo a parking ticket, I came across a headline that caught my eye in a different way.

New utility scam is popping up across the nation

Hey, wait a minute. This actually looks like something that could affect my life. This actually sounds like something I should read in order to better protect myself against the seemingly ever-increasing population of no-good, rotten scammers out there. Someone named Cameron Huddleston apparently has penned an article for Kiplinger.com, a well-respected financial magazine’s online presence, that will equip me to do battle with thieves. I’m interested.

The Better Business Bureau says that a new utility bill scam is popping up throughout the U.S. and Canada. And it involves an approach to get people to part with their money that's been growing in popularity over the past couple of years: prepaid debit cards.

Huh? I thought this was going to be about someone piggybacking onto my gas or electric bill? Debit cards? OK, I guess I’ll read on.

The BBB reports that scammers are calling people and claiming to work for a local electric, water or gas company. The callers tell people that they're late on a utility bill and that their service will be cut off if they don't pay immediately. Then they instruct people to purchase a prepaid debit card to pay their bill and call them back with the card number. Thieves then drain the value from the card.

Huh?

Scammers have turned to prepaid debit cards recently because wire transfer services have increased their fraud detection systems -- making it more difficult for them to use this once-popular method of stealing money from people. Scammers also like prepaid debit cards because they don't have to show a photo ID to collect or spend money on the cards.

Huh?

For help spotting a utility scam, the BBB offers these tips:

Then the article listed helpful tips like, “Utility companies would never operate with high-pressure tactics like this,” and “it’s a red flag if you are asked to pay by prepaid debit card.”

Huh?

Who is falling for this? How do you not know if you are behind on your gas payments, and even if you know you’re behind, who would go buy a prepaid debit card to pay the bill? Apparently it works, or it wouldn’t be “growing in popularity” among our nation’s degenerate scallywags.

Since there are obviously people out there who need my help, I have done the Better Business Bureau one better, and developed Smidge’s BBBB tip for spotting a utility scam: Live until you’re old enough to be responsible for paying the utility bill somewhere, then if you are still naïve enough to fall for a scam that idiotic, stop what you are doing and call me. I will walk you through whatever process we need to use to have you send me your entire life savings. I will give it all to charity, and you can consider it a valuable lesson and thank me later.

The article reminded me of a letter I received a while back from Ruby Addo Mills. She was the second wife of the late Ghanaian president who died not long ago. She was contacting me in view of the fact that we could be of great assistance to each other. She currently inherited the sum of ninety five million US dollars ($95,000,000.00) which she intended to use for investment purposes, specifically in my country of origin. She was very adamant about the fact that she would obviously never ask me for any of my account details until we met face-to-face in the bank’s vault in any of these three countries of my choice: Madrid, Spain, Johannesburg, South Africa or Kampala, Uganda. For security reasons, she wanted all communications go through her son. She wanted me to send her son, Samuel Kofi Atta Mills, the details to enable her contact me for more details, and she would explain more to me in next detailed fax to me.

Sam never did show up in Kampala like he promised.

Anyway… The end of the Kiplinger.com article had this to say:

Also, a utility bill scam that began last year has resurfaced. Utility companies in several states, including Kentucky and Tennessee, have received reports from customers who have received calls claiming that the federal goverment will help pay their electric bills. Click here to learn more about this utility bill scam and how to avoid it.

Since “government” was misspelled in the last paragraph, I’m half wondering if the whole thing wasn’t a brilliant double-reverse by some hacker, and the link to learn more was really going to steal my money somehow. Maybe it was going to trick me into paying to read the rest by entering a prepaid debit card number. The only problem with that is, I have an I.Q. above room temperature, and since I have been living a normal financial existence where I keep my money in something called a bank, and pay my bills with things like checks and credit cards, I have no idea where I would go to buy a prepaid debit card.

If it really was a real article, I guess maybe it was aimed at the same folks who care if J Lo is getting a parking ticket, or know where to buy a prepaid debit card.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2013 Marc Schmatjen

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