Tenants Were Told to Put the Utilities in Their Names. One Call to the Electric Company Revealed a Surprise in Their Favor
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Paying bills becomes surprisingly difficult when official records insist that someone’s home does not exist.
How can tenants open an electric account for a unit missing entirely from the utility company’s system?
Instead of correcting the landlord’s paperwork, a representative advised the broke students they had no legal duty to report her mistake.
Let’s see how it went down.
To pay the electric bill, your address has to exist
Seven months into my apartment lease, I received a letter from the gas company stating that I needed to set up an account and start paying, else my service would be “interrupted.”
I was very confused—my roommates and I, five people in total—all signed the lease believing all utilities were included.
Our lease stated how we could pay utilities “where applicable” and based on our conversation with the landlord prior to renting, all five of us left the apartment tour interpreting the lease as including utilities.
I truly don’t know whose error that was, but the fact that all five of us believed the same thing makes me think someone on the building side was mistaken (the unit was managed by one firm, owned by another, and I never knew who worked for the landlord and who for the management firm).
They tried to comply.
I sent an email to the landlord asking about this gas notice, and she tells me that utilities were never included and that I must set up gas and also electric accounts.
I set up a gas account, and to my surprise, we’ve been charged no back bills at all. Seven months of free gas.
One of my roommates goes to do the same with electric, but to our surprise, our apartment unit number is not listed on the website.
Our building has six units—101, 102, 201, 202 and so on. But for the third floor, only one drop-down option exists: 3. There is no Unit 3.
I love that the person at the electric company is on their side.
We call the electric company, who tells us that it’s ultimately not our problem. If the landlord didn’t include our unit number in their paperwork to receive building service, we aren’t responsible for her mistake.
The phone rep from the electric company, perhaps in a risky act of broke college student solidarity, advises us to not contact our landlord since we’re not legally required to inform her of her mistake in setting up electric service.
She is probably paying both electric bills for 301 and 302, thinking it’s the hall lights and laundry machines. Not our fault, we just did what we were told.
That worked out well! I guess the utilities are included!
Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.
Here’s an example of the opposite type of problem.
This doesn’t sound like a very good setup.
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Wow! Free power!
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a college student who decides to send his university a counter-bill after they try to get him to pay “inconvenience fees.”
At least the landlord was willing to work with this renter on the bill.
After learning utilities were never included, the roommates opened a gas account but discovered that the electric company had no record of their unit number.
A representative confirmed the landlord was likely paying for their electricity and advised them to leave the paperwork error alone since they followed every instruction.
Their apartment did not exist, but free electricity found it just fine.
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