Here's some on-going correspondence with Peoples Dominion, which is a provider of natural gas to the Western Pennsylvania area. A new law in Pennsylvania allows gas companies to turn off service due to payment deliquency during the coldest months of winter. Nice, huh?
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October 24, 2005 Ms. Sadie J. Kroeck, Manager Dear Ms. Kroeck, I was delighted to receive your October 19 response to my letter of September 30, and am frankly astonished by the ease with which you are able to justify to yourself the assessment of a $198.00 security deposit to my Dominion Peoples account. I am intrigued, however, by your creative use of mathematics; particularly amusing is your assertion that with monthly bills totaling $1369.16 and payments totaling $1316.87-with late charges of $36.31 tossed into the salad as apparent garnish-you are able to maintain with a straight face that my bills are not 'paid in full and on time.' In my September 30 letter, I made it plain that I intended to have my Dominion Peoples bill paid in full-less the $198.00 security deposit-by the November 05 date specified on my bill. To view this same matter from a different perspective, it remains a mystery to me what in the world, with bills totaling $1369.16 and payments of $1316.87, gives you any indication that future payments are in any jeopardy. Additionally, your helpful inclusion of my payment history points to the fact that your company occasionally combines two payments into one month, suggesting that on at least three occasions an entire monthly service period elapsed without a payment on my account. The very bill you included with your salvo of information indicates two payments with a single one-month period, one for $150.00 and another for $70.00. These checks represented two months' payments, and not two payments rendered during a single month. Your suggestion that I do not pay my bill each month is flatly misleading. Copies of all my handwritten, dated, and processed checks are easily available online. Upon request, I will happily furnish copies of other months' payments to either you or the additional addressees of our correspondence. As I also mentioned in my September 30 letter, it is of little interest to me what occurs with my payments when they leave my hand. This lack of interest happens to include the leisurely fashion with which the United States Postal Service apparently transports the envelopes containing my payments from Johnstown to Richmond, or the equally leisurely manner with which my payments are applied to my Dominion Peoples account balance. To phrase this idea somewhat more forcefully, perhaps the payment of $36.31 in late arrival penalties, along with the $198.00 security deposit assessed to my account, might interest the Postal Service, or even your own accounting department, more than it interests me. As I suggested in my previous letter, the payment of this security deposit on my account will be of interest to me at approximately the time when Hell freezes over, which may very well occur sooner rather than later, should Dominion Peoples be supplying natural gas to empower Hades' fires. I presume that your suggestion that I or most Pennsylvanians will be able to pay a Dominion Peoples wintertime heating bill 'in full and on time each month' is a sampling of Dominion Peoples' version of dry humor, particularly in the illumination of both the increases in you rates over the past sixteen months and the future raises still being anticipated and projected to occur before the heating season ends. Such is the ultimate folly of Pennsylvania's Chapters 14: With all of my natural gas-powered appliances save my water heater disconnected since June, my monthly bills continue to average nearly $44.00, and I am a single individual, living alone. Imagine the financial calamity experienced by most families with children, particularly those depending upon unemployment benefits or child support payments. How will they pay their heating bills 'in full and on time' Ms. Kroeck? How will a family living on Survivor's Benefits, or SSD, or Child Support payments pay a wintertime heating bill exceeding $300.00 'in full and on time'? And where will you put their security deposits? I am proud to stand with such people during these troubling times. And I'll be God-damned if I'll ignite my furnace before November, presuming my service has not been terminated, or I haven't died from the exposure to the cold, by that time. I'm afraid many of us will, Ms. Kroeck, largely because of security deposits and service terminations. Pennsylvania's Public Utility Commission advises me that there are over 34,000 household so far that they cannot assist because of the new law. This figure exclusively represents household that could have been assisted last year, before the law was enacted. What will we say to our young people-the children-when they complain about the cold in their homes? And when the Pennsylvania State legislature views Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol' this holiday season, will they shed a tear of happiness? Or will they need to leave the room in shame? Mencken once suggested that the world would beat a path to the man who builds a better mousetrap. It is a magnificently effective mousetrap the Pennsylvania State legislature has enabled your company to design and build, Ms. Kroeck, but what is legal is not always the right thing to do, or even the morally respectable one. Please know, Ms. Kroeck, that I treasure the parliamentarian spirit of our correspondence, and anticipate your next letter with great eagerness. I am already reviewing copies of Pennsylvania's Chapters 56 and 14 for the precise wording of my response. From this perspective, I actually rue the day when your company will eventually withdraw the $198.00 security deposit from my account. Please note, however, that a rudimentary perusal of my earlier letter, or even the array of documents you helpfully included in your response, will reveal to you the correct spelling of my name. Your misspelling points to an unfortunate incomprehension of basic reading and writing skills essential to a person in your professional position, if not a fundamental deficiency in the American elementary school system. I hope you do not object to my addition of Governor Rendell, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and the CEOs of Dominion Peoples and Columbia Gas, to our growing list of correspondents. Additionally, our letters will shortly become available online. I'll try to remember to advise you of the web site address as soon as our letters appear, but by then you might already be aware of it. Until that time, I remain
Very sincerely yours,
CC: Senator John N. Wozniak |
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| Horace P. Payne, Senior Counsel Dominion Resources Services, Inc. 625 Liberty Avenue Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15222 Dear Lawyer Payne, Please forgive me, but I feel a need to review with you what I feel are the pertinent points of your November 04 letter to me: 1: You are an employee of Dominion Peoples; Possibly you can imagine my astonishment. Further, you 'strongly encourage (me) to reconsider Ms. Kroeck's offer to set up a payment arrangement on (my) remaining account balance,' by which, I presume, you mean the $198.00 security deposit on my account, which I've already stated that I have no intention of paying. I further presume that if I continue to refuse to pay this unreasonable charge, you'll shortly be tying Nell to the railroad tracks. Enclosed with this letter is my check in the amount of $65.81. As your accounting department will be able to advise you, this payment will return my current Dominion Peoples account balance to $198.00-which, ironically, is the amount of the security deposit you 'strongly encourage' me to pay. I would appreciate your giving this check to your billing department. They want it by December 01.
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