Thinking about buying in Brooklyn and signing away your life to a mortgage holder? That’s just one level of humiliating serfdom that’s in store for you. As dds580 writes in the Prospect Heights message board: “Sadly, all the utility companies treat us like lepers rather than customers…”
“When I got my house, I did not get a water bill for almost a year, nor even on the prior owner’s name. A year later, I got a bill for a couple of thousand plus penalties. I tried to negotiate a deal with them since a never got a bill, but they would not hear of it.”
“The bills were supposedly accurate because they were an ‘actual’ readings of the meter – I couldn’t find one in the house, and when I would bring this to their attention, they would sarcastically ask me if I knew what a meter look like. I could not get them to come to inspect their meter.”
“… It turns out there was no meter in this house. I was still being held responsible for the missing meter. I had to get a plumber, and paid to have a meter installed. Once I had a meter, I fought them to have a refund on the outrageously high bills … After a year two years, I finally got them to credit some money … but I could not get credit for all the time they overbilled me, because of a ‘statute of limitations’ on the time I could get some credit for…”
“If you need something from the electric company, they want to charge you for everything, even to do a reading on Saturdays. They act like dictators. As such, they demand they are always right, and we have no right to complain or anything else.”
“I have a friend from Dominican Republic, and his family bought a generator to send to their relatives because they experience blackouts on a regular basis. I wish we could do the same thing so we would not have to do business with the utility companies here.”
Be happy you’re still renting in the Prospect Heights Message Boards