Kafka and Bills
by cactus
Kafka and Bills
Back in May, we moved out of state. Before we did, we canceled our assorted services, ranging from the newspaper subscription to gas. One of the utilities we canceled was Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The ex-GF called, and they said they’d do a final reading and send a bill to the address we provided; a two month temporary apartment. Perhaps we should have been more pro-active about wondering about where that bill went, but what with the move out of state (actually, two moves), a new job, etc., there was a lot on our minds.
Fast forward (more than) a few months. The day before Christmas, my ex-GF gets a call from a collection agency. They had gotten her phone number from LA DWP, which was irate that we hadn’t paid the final bill; issued in September one month after we had moved out of our temporary apartment. We never got that bill, or any other notices from DWP. And, apparently it never occurred to the folks at LA DWP that if they had my wife’s phone number, they might try to call her themselves before paying a collections agency to do just that with the number they provided to the collections agency. Again – perhaps we should have been more diligent, but things fall through the crack when you’re moving around… and we had provided contact info – a place to send the bill that might have been useful had they not taken four months to put out a new bill (if it was ever sent), and a phone number that remains valid to this day.
So my wife decides to call the LA DWP to see if she could pay them directly. She spoke to several people at LA DWP including several supervisors, and every one of them claimed not to be authorized to accept payment for this bill. She even left several messages with the collections department of LADWP and no one returned the messages. So she called back the collections agency – PMR Progressive – and perhaps because its the holiday season, nobody answered. She’s called back. Nobody answers.
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by cactus