The gas company only comes around every six months or so to check my meter reading. The rest of the time they overestimate my usage and charge me about $200 a month in gas for living in a one bedroom apartment. We’re encouraged to do the gas man’s work for him by reading and submitting our own readings, but this is nearly impossible. Oh sure, they say you can enter it online or over the phone but when you actually try this you’re either told that your entry is invalid or an error appears. Trying to figure out why this is happening is nearly impossible.
Reading a gas meter is not difficult. My meter reading is definitely less than the estimate. I’ve been keeping my thermostat set at 60° this winter, and 55° while I’m not at home. The only thing I can figure out is that they won’t accept readings that are lower than the estimate unless it comes from the actual gas man. Who doesn’t exist.
Running the Dominion gas gauntlet of automated phone menus is the worst experience of its kind that I’ve ever had. There is no quick way to jump to a customer service representative. You can’t simply hit zero to be directed there, and they don’t tell you how to get there in the automated menu. I lucked into it by pounding the 9 key about 20 times. Their hours are 7am to 7pm M‑F, but only on Mars. Many places, after being on hold for 5 or 10 minutes, offer to take your number and call you back when your place in the queue is reached. I hung up and called again, figuring that if I pretended I was going to cancel my service that I’d get to a representative faster. Turns out Dominion does have that leave your number thing, but I was only prompted for it after I’d plugged all the “Cancel this Account” buttons. Now I have to wait between 1:03 and 1:17 to get a callback. Pounding the 9 key about 20 times probably just sent me permanently to the bottom of the queue. Touch-tone Hell. Those gouging incompetents at Dominion…
I’ve been on hold for over thirty minutes at this point, listening to some broad spell out URLs and writhing in agony at a repeated smooth jazz rendition of While My Guitar Gently Weeps.
This version is much cooler, mainly because of Prince.