Collections

Being holy week and all, I hope that you don't think that this blog is going to be about Sunday church collections. Because it isn't.

Last week John received his water bills for his rentals. All were fine except for 1 house. It showed that the bill wasn't paid for last quarter. So the amont was outrageous. He checked with his bank, and low and behold, there was the cancelled check showing the water company received it. When he called them and waiting forever, they still claimed that they had no record of the payment and would it be possible to send them a copy of the cancelled check. Sure no problem. He'll do one better since it's a few buildings away from mine. He asked me to drop it off and pay the current bill.

So me being the nice wife that I am, I did. Today...Monday, April 6th...in the wet snow and cold.

I walk in and there's an enormous amount of people there. I notice a section that is marked "Collection' and a section that is marked "cashier". I pulled a number before I realized that it was only for the collection line. But thought, 'I'm just paying this so I'll go to the cashier.

WRONG

I told the cashier what was going on and she told me that she couldn't access my account because it was delinquent. Huh?! Wha?! She told me to get a number for the collection line. They have to print out a new bill and then come back to her.

Well, I guess it was a good thing that I took a number when I walked in. Still it was a long wait. I had 880 and when I sat down, they were calling 865. Ugh.

After about a 30 minute wait, it was finally my turn.

I explained what the problem was. He looked up the account and said "no, we didn't get the payment yet.". Um, yes, you did here is a copy of the cancelled check, which somebody here told us to send to you. He looked at me like I had two heads. He looks at the check, and went to go talk to his supervisor. He comes back and says that they have to put a trace on the check. Hands me back my copy...because at least he was smart enough to make another copy...I told him that I still needed a new bill printed out so I could pay the current bill. He clearly didn't know how to figure out the amount that I needed to pay. I looked at him and just said that it will be 161.31. Because John had already figured that one out

I thought about explaining it to him, but I just wanted to get out of there. I was tired of listening to crying and screaming kids and grown ups yelling because the water company doesn't know what they were doing. So he prints out the bill and sends me back to the cashier.

I was quite happy to leave that place. I really felt out of place there. Plus I think I was the only one that had a job. It was that bad.

I am sure this saga isn't over because it's the water company. They clearly don't have their shit together. I just hope that I don't have to go there again. Otherwise, John is going to owe me big time