This happened in the Iowa area of gas service.
I had just set up a payment plan with Aquila Gas to pay the remainder of our bill in monthly installments. Right before I was to make my first payment in this arrangemnet, there was a bank error in my checking account and I was unable to use my account or any funds in it for about two weeks.
My payment was originally due June 13, and I ended up not being able to mail it until the 23 of June. The payment was received by Aquila and taken out of my checking account. I had been visiting my parents for about a week from the end of June to the beginning of July.
I returned home on Wednesday, July 6 and 10 minutes after I walked in the door a man showed up and turned off my gas. (After this I checked my mail and found that while I was gone they had sent a notice that my gas would be shut off unless I paid the remaining balance of 884 dollars because I had sent my payment late.)
Since then, I have talked to the company's customer service reps many times who have almost all blatantly lied to me each time I call because they are too lazy to find out what is going on. I asked if the bank could fax a letter explaining what happened and I could go back on my payment plan and customer service told me that would be fine. On Monday the 18 of July, US Bank sent a fax explaining the situation and stating that there was no way I could have sent the payment because of what happened to my checking account. Since then I have been calling and getting the runaround.
On Wednesday I was told that the fax had been received and I would get a call by that afternoon telling me that my previous arrangement would be restored if the fax was sufficient proof of what happened. I received no call and was later told by someone else that customer service reps have no way of knowing if a fax has been received.
On Friday the 22nd of July another customer service rep told me that the fax machine was broken on Monday so they probably didn't get it. After talking to a supervisor I found out that the fax machine was never broken, the customer service rep just made that up. The supervisor also told me that the collections department insists it never received the fax although my bank sent it twice.
Probably the highlight of all my communication with Aquila was after the battery in my phone died while I was talking to the supervisor. I called back and a customer service rep named Christopher — employee number 010762 — answered the phone. I asked if he could please connect me to extension 8311 (that was the supervisor I had been talking to when my phone died). This man started screaming into the phone at me that I was insinuating that he didn't know how to do his job because I asked to be connected to an extension. Then he went on to scream at me that my gas bill is due and I need to pay it and I need to realize this. I could not believe how he was screaming at me since the only thing I said to him was could he please connect me to extension 8311.
I was also told on this day by the supervisor I talked to (who was the only helpful honest person I talked to in the whole company — Serida in the Missouri office) that whoever told me that I could fax that information and be put back on my payment plan made that up, too. She acknowledged that the customer service people I talked to were lying to me and she took their names and said she would take care of it.
Collections is still insisting they never received my fax, but they say if they did receive it they don't care because it was the bank's mistake not theirs. That is so good to hear how a company with a local monopoly does not care about their customers. That is already obvious by their incredibly rude customer service.
While their customer service is fabricating stories so that they don't have to do their job and find out what is going on, people like me are spending hours on hold trying to get their gas turned on so they can cook their family dinner. Their collections department is saying they really don't care if it was a bank mistake, because it wasn't their mistake so why should they care if I have to give my 3 year old child a bath in freezing cold water and dress him in dirty clothes because there is no gas to run the water heater? Unless they are in danger of being sued, why would they care about helping anyone?
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