A couple of years ago, I had a fight with the water company 'round about this time because, even though they had not been able to read my meter for five months, they had nevertheless kept billing me at the same rate as they had the previous September -- when I'd used a ton of water on the lawn. I had to get fairly nasty to get them to come out and read my meter, which resulted in a credit that paid the actual water bill for two more months. (This was at a time when they were still on the old Veolia Water practice of read one month, estimate the next, and because of ill-timed deep snow they had not been able to actually read the meter on schedule.)
Well, it appears Citizens Energy is up to the same old tricks. They read my gas meter, but didn't bother to read my water meter (which has been uncovered pretty much all through this mess because the meter pit is right next to the driveway and I shovel it off at the same time). The water volume has thus been estimated two months in a row, now.
I'm going to guess that the reason they have been estimating it at twice the amount as the "same period last year" is because in November, we had a one-time sewer emergency during which the contractor used a lot of water to flush out our line. And it's not from trickling water during the hard freeze, either; we don't do that.*
It seems to me that instead of coming up with some idiotic estimate that's based on what they THINK I'm doing, it might make more sense (and leave more money in my pocket instead of lining theirs and by the way letting them draw interest on it) to simply charge me based on what I used LAST year.
Or even better, maybe it's time for Citizens to install remote reading meters like the power company did a decade ago.**
But I suppose the actual implementation of intelligent solutions to the problem would be too easy. Or cost too much money. Not that they aren't screwing us unmercifully already. There is simply no way on earth that two of us are using 858 CCF of water a month.
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* We have NEVER had to do that in this house, because we're on a slab here and the water pipes do not come up in any outside walls, but rather, they come up in the slab concrete about 8 inches from the outside of the wall. This is mostly because when you build a house on a slab, the concrete is poured inside a framework of "L" blocks, and you can't very well run the copper pipes through a solid concrete block. So it's very easy for us to avoid pipes getting frozen; we just open the cabinet doors and let warm air circulate in under the kitchen sink, or open the closets where the outdoor hose bibb pipes poke through the wall.
** I know my ham radio friends will cringe at that, because Part 15 "smart" or remote-reading electric meters are alleged to be a big source of QRM in some places. A FAQ page at the ARRL sort of debunks this. I've not noticed a problem with mine, and my radio is about 12 feet away from the electric meter. So who knows.
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