Suzy Says

Remember the Franz Kafka Utility Company? Also known as East Bay MUD (appropriately enough, since their name is definitely mud, at least in my house). You know, the company that charges you 90% fees, 10% actual water consumption? What possible motivation does a person have, other than her own conscience, for lowering her water usage? I got a whopping credit of $1.26 for low water usage this time, and $9 was my actual water usage. The other $90? Fees and service charges.

Well, they’re in bad company. A couple of months ago, I got an email from PG&E telling me that I saved 20% on my gas and electric over the winter (miserliness has its privileges), so I’d receive a 20% discount on my bill. I didn’t see the discount on my next bill, so I called and asked about it. Oh, they said, it can take a month or two to show up on your bill. Check next month.

So I checked this month, and it still wasn’t there. I called again, and this time, I was told that the credit had been applied to the March bill. I asked why I had received an email in June saying I’d get a credit. Exasperated, the phone peon said I had received the credit in March, but was notified of it in June.

Here’s a hint: tell people when it happens. And instead of saying “You’re going to receive a credit”, say “You HAVE received a credit”, and state the amount.

Also: maybe give all the phone peons the same story? Just a suggestion.

I love it when I pay a bill on line*, and get an email saying, “Your payment request has been received.” Please, please! Take my money, I’m begging you! Don’t reject my check – I’ll be crushed!

The next worst thing is when you pay it on line, and immediately get another bill for the next month. Within minutes. Or possibly seconds. You never get to enjoy the feeling of being paid up. You always have one more bill waiting for you, hanging over your head like a virtual sword of Damocles.

Today, I paid a bill on line, and two hours later got an automated call reminding me to pay the bill I had just paid. They couldn’t even be bothered to harass me in person. That’s even worse than immediately getting another bill.

Meh.

*If you pay EBMUD on line, they charge you several dollars as a “convenience fee”. Convenient for whom, exactly? See a theme here?

Mail these days is rarely, if ever, fun. Since most of us use the instant gratification of email instead of the delayed gratification of the USPS, mailboxes now rarely contain love letters or cards or just plain letters. Sometimes you get a birthday card, and sometimes a postcard from a friend whose life is far more interesting than yours, but my mail mostly consists of items meant for the former occupants (who apparently don’t know that their friends at the post office would forward their mail if only they had been asked) and bills.

Last week, I got two horrifying bills in two horrifying days. One was for gas and electricity, and they wanted $127 from me. The other was from the Franz Kafka Utility Company, and they wanted $107. Apparently odd numbers are oddly popular among the odd. I was mystified by both bills, since I turn the heat off whenever I leave the house, turn it down to 57 when I go to bed, and rarely keep it above 65 or 66 ever. I also only light the room I’m actually in. I tried those eco lights in the bedroom, but it made it look like a dentist’s office or the dressing room of a cheap and cruel department store, so I had to go back to the warm glow of real light bulbs. I do have the ugly eco lights on the porch and in the laundry room, where atmosphere and appearance are less important, but every time I drive up to the house and porch light is on, I think, God, that light is ugly.

It’s not pretty being green.

Anyway, I was pretty much resigned to the gas & electric bill, but there were so many inexplicable line items on the FKUC bill that I called them and asked them what the FKUC. The person on the phone was very nice, and nearly the first thing she asked me was if this was my first Oakland water bill. She wasn’t surprised to hear it was – apparently my reaction to the bill is pretty much universal. The good news: the $15 new account charge is a one time thing – unless I move elsewhere in beautiful Oakland, in which case I will get to see it and pay it again.

The bad and the surreal news:

• The “water service charge” isn’t for the water usage. It’s for the meter, long since paid for, that the FKUC uses to read the water usage. The actual water charge is listed under “water flow charge”, and is considerably less expensive than the charge for the long paid off meter. Does this make sense to anyone?

• The sewage charge was nearly $40, and that’s apparently the least it will ever be. I asked what the most could be, and was glad I was sitting down when she informed me it could go as high as $110. As soon as she said “it can go up and down”, I knew I was in trouble. Has anyone ever known a charge such as this or, say, an adjustable mortgage, to actually go down? Didn’t think so.
• Since I don’t have a dishwasher or water the lawn (the Almighty, as my father used to say, has been doing an almighty good job of that lately) and turn the water off when I brush my teeth, etc., I couldn’t understand why the bill was so high. Here’s fun news: it isn’t. According to my utility company, I am a good citizen who uses half the water that the average Oakland resident does.

I’d hate to see their bills. But then, I hate to see (and pay) mine, too.

Speaking of paying bills: remember that ticket for not pausing enough at the stop sign? Yeah, well, it was worse than either utility bill: $159 (again with the odd numbers). And they charged me a “convenience fee” for paying it on line. I wonder whose convenience that was?

My mail is delivered to a post office box. Partly because the building was out of mailboxes when I moved in (remember, no-one is supposed to live here), and partly because I can go and get the mail when I feel like it, instead of having it just appear, like an uninvited guest.

The truth is that the mail is seldom fun, but it really outdid itself this time, containing the following (all in one box!):

• A charming missive from my bank, returning a check I had foolishly attempted to deposit by mail, and informing me that they can no longer accept deposits by mail (even though they list an address for mail-in deposits on their website). I am beginning to think Kafka has been reincarnated as my bank.

• A letter from my friends at the State of California Franchise Tax Board, trying to get me to pay $1,000 in import tax for “importing” the grandfather clock I inherited from my late father. Faithful readers may recall that I went down this road already about three years ago, and that the road ended in my not having to pay the tax and my stepmother giving me a sedative.

  Why they are trying it on again after all this time, I don’t know. The Governator must really need some cigars. Anyway, the paperwork from Round One is with the rest of my stuff in storage, so I asked my sister Beth to send me a copy of Dad’s Will, which specifies the clock is mine, and I can prove that I don’t owe them a thing, except my abiding contempt.

• The Third Edition of one of my father’s books, Principles of Ecotoxicology, dedicated to his memory and with a forward praising his personal and professional achievements. I collapsed into tears. It’s amazing that almost 5 years after you lose someone, you can feel as bad as you did when it first happened. I hope I can face the copy of his Will with more courage than I could the copy of his book.
  

For reasons beyond my control (read: the mail), I received my new bank card approximately three weeks after the old one had expired. Now there’s a reason to go postal.

My bank card doubles as a Visa card, and since my only other Visa card was rudely and summarily sold my Pacific Heights tenement, but I couldn’t get any, since I didn’t have the bank card.

In the immortal words of the immortal A.A. Milne, “He could see the honey, he could smell the honey, but he couldn’t quite reach the honey.”

Having been assured that the card was on its way, I haunted the post office where I get my mail to the point that the guy behind the counter now thinks I have a crush on him. I began to think of alternate ways to get money. Rob a bank? Too risky. Set up myself as a charity? Too much work. Find a sugar daddy? Way too old.

In the immortal words of the immortal A.A. Milne, “Piglet lay there, wondering what had happened. At first he thought that the whole world had blown up; and then he thought that perhaps only the Forest part of it had; and then he thought that perhaps only he had…”

I had come to the end of my rope when the card magically appeared. I reinforced the crush illusion by hugging the post office guy. I skipped away to activate the card and start using it. Yay!

I really should have known that my happiness would be short-lived. Have I learned nothing in the past few years?! Apparently I have equal amounts of optimism and bad luck. The card was declined. “Declined” is now my least-favorite word in the English language. It’s even worse than “work” or “boredom” (these are synonyms in Suzy vocabulary).

I called the bank, filled with righteous indignation. It had taken my card forever to reach me, and now they wouldn’t let me use it, even though their very own automated systen had given me its impersonal blessing to go ahead and spend with impunity.

The bank informed me that the card had been flagged for fraud detection, given that it was almost a month between their mailing it out and my using it. Bankers appear to be even more impatient than I am, assuming death if you don’t pay your bill for two months, and fraud if you don’t use your card for a whopping three weeks. They assured me that they would decline to decline my card now. Yay!

I bought enough groceries for the Brady Bunch, gloating over a stocked refrigerator (including wine).

I really should have known that my happiness would be short-lived.

I got an email from the incomparable Candi, the hostess with the mostes’ over at the aptly-named No Hassle Hosting, telling me that my card had once again gotten a D. I once again called the bank. Guess what? They had put the fraud tag back on the very next day after they took it off. They were at a loss to explain it (how scary is that?). They were so apologetic that I considered asking them to come on over and clean the house for me, and maybe pick up a pizza on the way. They promised me earnestly that I would never again get a D as long as I lived.

So far, so good. But I’m just waiting for the next bad grade. See, it’s like this. I really should know…

With thanks to my father, who told us Pooh stories so often that we nicknamed him Pooh. And apologies to the divine Miz Cline.