Complaint / Review
Northern Indiana Public Service Co
NIPSCO NIPSCO abusing the disabled and the sick

Today, Wednesday January 12, I answered my door tofind a service man from NIPSCO here to disconnect my gas and electric servicedue to non-payment.&nbspI was never givenany notice of disconnection, which is required by Indiana state law. &nbspThere is no proof they sent the letter otherthan their word.&nbspI informed him that I was never given anynotice and he agreed to come back later after I had a chance to call NIPSCO CustomerService.&nbspBut this all had to be donebefore 3:30PM or the disconnect would proceed.

NIPSCO service reps claim that a notice was mailed on Dec27 and a follow up phone call was made.&nbspThe rep also claimed NIPSCO is not responsible for mail NOT beingdelivered or lost.&nbspThe phone number onrecord has been wrong for 6 years and I have repeatedly contacted them aboutcorrecting it.&nbspSo how could I be calledwhen I no longer have that number.

I fell behind due to an unexpected funeral expense and justcannot&nbspget the money together to catchup on my bills.&nbspI simply could not letmy partners mother be left in a freezer until she could save all the money topay for the funeral.

On top of that, my partner is a disabled, autistic personwith cardiac and other respiratory problems as well as life threateninghepatitis C. Power outages are life threatening in anyweather.&nbspThat is why we have a emergencygenerator which is natural gas powered.&nbspIt would not work since they were going to cut the gas AND electricservice off.

Being left in a house without heat or electricity for anextended length of time that a disconnect would cause will result in anotherhospitalization.&nbspHaving to move suddenlywithout preparation can cause severe trauma to an autistic person.&nbspWhen the NIPSCO rep was informed of this, theattitude was "oh well, not my problem".&nbspActually, if we had the money to move or goto a motel, we would not have fallen behind on the NIPSCO bill.

My complaint about NIPSCO was the callous attitude but howthey never sent the mandatory disconnect notice and could not contact me byphone because the phone numbers corrections kept getting lost.&nbspNIPSCO should be required to send disconnectnotices by certified mail to prove that the notice was received.

Despite the chaos of the afternoon, we were miracled andthe bill was paid just in time.