I used to live in a town where they had their own local utility crew to come and read your meter. Was supposed to happen once a month.

We didn't get a bill for a good long stretch, then one day we received one in the mail for over $2500. That's right... twenty-five HUNDRED dollars.

When we contacted the municipal authorities, they told us we received an "estimated" bill for the following reasons:

1) They had not been able to verify that there was anyone living in the home, so they never sent the earlier bills

and

2) They had to estimate the bills because the readers were never able to get into our home to read the meters.

Here are the problems with these excuses. One, we had been living in the house for nearly a year. The post office is less than one block from the municipal building; they could have simply ASKED if anyone was living at #26 so-and-so street.

Two, at the time these readers were supposedly unable to reach us, we had ONE car in the household, which I used for work EVERY WEEKDAY. My wife was home with our young daughters EVERY SINGLE DAY. She had nowhere to go and no way to get to any of the places she would have wanted to go to. Besides, if a meter reader made a house call one day and found no one home, it would have been a simple matter to just come back the next day, or whatever.

Needless to say, when the "estimated" bill for 8-9 months' worth of services came in, we raised hell.

To top it all off, when my father and I went to the municipal offices to contest the bill, we had to deal with a woman (it was Christmastime) wearing one of those stupid antler headband things. Imagine trying to have a serious conversation with a 200-lb-plus woman wearing antlers.

Sadly, that's not too untypical for our town. I have met other people who have had to deal with the same corrupt utility personnel.