Modern Geekery

I flew to Chicago today and my flight was late enough that I was able to have a nice breakfast with the family before leaving for the airport. As I was sitting at the table, drinking my tea, the doorbell rang. The nice fellow from Progress Energy at the door informed us that he was there to cut off the power. After my initial “do what?” reaction, we dug out the last bill and took a look at it. I’d paid it online and the amount didn’t match what the guy’s disconnection notice said. I pointed out to him that the account numbers did not match and that he must therefore have the wrong house.

When he got around to asking our names, he discovered that they didn’t match the one on the account he was supposed to terminate. We pointed out that the folks next door had just moved in and that we’d gotten a misdirected bill for them a few weeks back. We’d dutifully set it back out for the mail carrier and thought nothing more of it. It is alsoimportant to note that our own power bill, then one we’d just paid, had been for a short pay cycle.

It turns out that the folks next door had applied for a connection using our address by accident, realized it, and then re-applied with the right address. Progress Energy decided to simply cancel our account and transfer the service at our house to the guy next door. I was astounded to discover that they would do this without even the most cursory phone call to make sure that we wanted our service disconnected.

After discussing the situation with the company, we’re confident that we’ve got our side of the situation straightened out. They’ve opened a new account for us and made sure that we’d have uninterrupted service. I feel sorry for the poor guys next door. They had almost assuredly been paying their bill – the one that actually was for their address. But when I left, it looked like their power had been cut and the outstanding bill will almost certainly be applied against their credit report. Mainly though, this appears to be a total failure by Progress Energy to sanity check their billing and account processes.