Breaking News: NICOR may over bill you by $800!

I never really paid attention to my bills. I mean, I trust the corporations are doing their job right? I always knew the range of expenses I should be paying and if it was outrageous, I'd take a further look. Now that I am looking for new ways to earn money, I am taking a finer look at the calculations. NICOR made a big mistake!

One calculation that needs no calculation was a bill I had received from NICOR GAS COMPANY. The bill was an astounding $1,078.47!!!!!!

My parents have owned restaurants that never had the gas bill come to that unforgiving number!

I had to call the gas company 3 times, in which the first lady Beverly was pretty rude and tested my patience, she then later told me check the meter. The next told me she'd adjust it after I had walked around my house several times to find other meters and then the right one.

The four dials are the ones where you read all numbers. If you see the needle reading between a 6 and a 7 go with the 6. If you see the number between a 7 or an 8, basically the lower number of the two.

I wrote this to a local newspaper:

My story:

Today, I just received a $1,091.42 bill when it should be around $190.54... I spoke to the first billing agent Beverly, whom told me to check the meter myself and then called back. Then the second representative, Kelly gave me a new amount when I told her what my meter said. There are 4 dials and I could only read two because there was so much condensation in the box on the glass. I asked for someone to clean it so it's more readable but she said it will dry up in time. I settled for $293.00 after she told me that a number must have been predisposed and that from my actual reading it said it's between 7 and the 8 on the dial, it means my heat is at a 7. Last month it was 7.40 so if this month it's lower then my bill should be lower than the $190.54. She said "the weather's been cold," but you know what? "It hasn't been that cold!!!"

QUESTIONS:

1. I do not believe someone came out there. (Someone should clean the meter inside because I sure do not know how to open it.)

2. If someone did come out here to read the meter, are they going to be informed, and accountable of their costly error! That's a $700 dollar difference. Any advice for me on handling Nicor from your past experience?

She typed in my gas meter reading and told me my adjusted bill of $293.72. I was credited almost $800 because of their lousy mistake. The lady told me, everyone has errors, no one's perfect. THIS ARE UNACCEPTABLE WORDS. Just because it was a computer glitch but lets take a look at this picture if I had been automatically deducted with $1,091.42 of my bank account and it was an overwithdrawal and ruined my credit, would NICOR pay my withdrawal fee along with my bad credit score. I know for a fact they wouldn't. Man is not perfect but even 1% of errors for a million people is $10,000!!!

If hospitals full of a million babies had 1% errors that would be 10,000 misplaced children! I know people and money are different but this is to show the absurdity of the excuse "people make mistakes" as a comment from someone working for a company that has just overbilled $800!

I got off the phone and told my mom, at this point she was still not satisfied and told me that the usual bill is around $190. I decided to call NICOR once again because it said on the bill that there was an estimated reading on January 18, 2007 at 7464 and an actual reading on February 16,2007 at 8790!!! That's a difference of 1,326 in only 29 days! C'mon NICOR how much can a home of 2 use?!!!

I don't even think someone really came out to actually check the meter like they claim. Nicor needs to make that "so-called" meter reader accountable for this mistake or mistrust and lawsuits might arise for them if little to huge errors like this are detected.

The second lady said, well then you can enter your own readings monthly online. Why the heck am I doing work for NICOR? Will I get money for working for them or is this the part where I'm supposed to appreciate their trust in me to gather my meter information and time I take out of my day to input this so they don't have to pay their meter readers or systems for the expensive gas they charge us?

This is 2007, they will fail if they do not make their system accurate. Besides tax, is this the unpopular tax of trusting NICOR?

I received more excuses for the mistakes than I should have. The lady told me that a supervisor would call me and I told her I know this tactic in which you say someone will call and no one ever does. It has been a week and I don't expect anyone to. I expected this ahead of time after googling "Nicor Gas company, overbilling".

I check the Chicago utility board website from a friend who works for the city of Chicago and it states that we are all entitled to request of the Nicor representative to come out and read our meter once a year and that we be present. I requested that in the last call and the NICOR person is coming on March 8th. I can't wait. I also asked someone to clean the meter because you can hardly read it, but if they can't read it, is it their chance to play god and put down any number they want to at the expense of other? No, I wonder how much they get paid a year for making these mistakes. Someone from NICOR should look into it.

IF anyone else finds themselves in this same predicament, please make a comment or email Nicor directly like you should.

No corporation should be able to get away with this incompetent mistake.

SUGGESTIONS FOR NICOR:

make the meter readers accountable for their errors
compensate the people with a free month of gas if they made a mistake of more than $500 because that's ridiculous first of all, second of all, this way NICOR can keep track of their losses and the executives will take notice of the reasons behind it.
focus more on the people and your stock prices will stay up because when you lose the trust of your people and consumer confidence because of the chance that you may have been over billing them all along, $8 dollars or $8000, your NICOR name is associated with cheat, careless, unaccountable, incompetent you know there are news medias waiting around the corner to investigate and report more of this to your stock investors.
spend more money on more accurate systems, and if you need people to check their own gas, reduce their bill for the thing you should be doing.

Posted: 8:04 p.m. EST March 1, 2007 by Anne Meesriyong