Someone (PG&E) has been naughty, shutting off power to lower-income homes by an increase of 75 percent over last year.
Writes Leticia Miranda at RaceWire:
The deal is with a harder economy basic needs are hard to meet like gas and electricity because more people don’t have jobs or are taking in relatives or close friends who maybe lost their home. Utility bills finally come at the end of the month and if you can’t fork out the money to pay, PG&E sends you a 15-day notice, then a 48-hour notice. If you still can’t pay, PG&E’s new “SmartMeter” makes it easier to shut off your electricity using a wireless signal without sending an electrician to your home, which costs the company money.
Consumer advocates say that it is during this final step before shutting off power where customers can negotiate with the company about paying the bill. Considering that most of those 91,393 low-income households eventually paid their bills might lead an astute thinker to believe that the issue isn’t irresponsible customers but the company.
Dating Jesus 
On my very first glance at your heading, I thought that the company was shutting off electricity to poor households for part of the day in order to conserve it and have it available for the wealthier families. Call it class warfare if you must, but it could come to that.
And that would suck large.
The Power Company here has to jump through numerous legal hoops before shutting someone down during the winter, (Oct.-May). There are also social service agencies that help with low income families meeting their obligations.
But as the jobs situation remains stagnate and the economy continues to suck, services are seriously strained.
Supposedly, that’s the case here, too, hoops. I haven’t heard that they haven’t, yet. Jumped through hoops, I mean.
Ours was turned off last week (I misread the bill) and when I called I had to pay $175 on the spot to have it turned back on and another $50 to have it turned back on the same day. Which I did because it cost less than losing all the food in the fridge and freezer.
I wonder about those who can’t afford it though, and can’t afford to replace the food they lose.
Jaysus. There are weeks when I would be hard-pressed to find that amount of money scattered around the house.
We’ve been behind on the bill for a little while now, trying to get caught up. They told us they were going to disconnect it a little while back if a certain payment wasn’t in by Thursday. I called and asked if we could pay on Friday and they refused. ONE FREAKING DAY. That’s all I wanted.
I tell ya, it makes me less likely to pay up when they are so awful about it.
I had a similar discussion with a doctor once. You want to know how small I am? The dispute was over something like $35 or some similar amount. I paid in pennies. I thought I was being pretty slick. I think I was late by a day and immediately heard from a collection agency. So I paid in pennies. I’m not proud of that, but I still think it was funny. And when the issue came back, I had to go to a new doctor, because I wasn’t sure they thought it was funny, too.
“I paid in pennies.”
Only tangentially relevant: My sister had power of attorney for an old family friend whose niece and nephews had, for no reason that WE knew, deserted her. When there was a small amount of money left after the estate was settled, my sister was going to send it to them in pennies. I was more than willing to help because I was so angry with these little people who didn’t even have the decency to thank my sister for a lot of effort and caring.
My sister didn’t do it, she had a check sent, but MAN the situation pissed me off.
Wow. Now that might have justified paying in pennies. I was just being a pill, I think. I do not cotton to collection agencies when I actually do pay my bills.
I think there is a law somewhere, saying that you cannot pay more than $50 in pennies.
Years ago my mother told me of someone who had a messy divorce, and the husband paid alimony in pennies–dropped in a barrel of molasses.
Now that makes a statement. And fortuntely, my snarky little bill-paying was under the $50 limit.