You need to pay attention
Electricity bill
A reader sent me a link to an interesting article a couple of weeks ago. The gist of it is that Sendai City upgraded almost 2,000 streetlights in 2010, but someone forgot to cancel the contract for the old lights with the electric company. The city has been paying the bill of almost 800,000 yen a month ever since. They only noticed recently.
It seems like they are not going to get their (our!) money back.
Internet bill
We had something similar with NTT/OCN. After the big earthquake in Sendai in 2011 the house we were living in was damaged and we had to move. We cancelled all our utilities and the house was demolished shortly afterwards.
About a year later I noticed that our phone bills were quite high, and when I asked NTT about it, we realised we were still paying for OCN for the old account, even though we cancelled it with NTT.
Apparently, even though OCN is wholly owned by NTT, and their services are sold as a bundle, we should have also contacted OCN to cancel our service. Because we didn’t, they happily continued billing us for the old account as well as the new account.
I did call OCN up and complain, but they refused to give us a refund at first. Then I mentioned the circumstances of our move and after a bit longer the rep agreed to refund the extra payments. If we hadn’t had the ‘victims of natural disaster’ card to play I am pretty sure we wouldn’t have gotten a refund.
Water bill
We got a water bill for over four million yen once. True story. Unfortunately I have lost the photo I took of it but I can remember the complete incredulity when I first saw it.
The bill was over two million yen for water, and two million yen for sewerage. My wife and I freaked out slightly, then we called the water company.
Who were extremely nice about the whole thing. They told us there was probably a leak somewhere, and gave us the number of a company that could help us look for it (the home owner is responsible for pipes on the property).
The contractor dug up the garden a bit, found and fixed the leak, and then we had to submit proof of the repair as well as water bills from previous years (to show what our normal consumption looks like) to the water company. We got a new bill reissued for an amount similar to an average month for us.
Be vigilant
I guess the lesson here is to pay attention to your bills. Especially if you have them on automatic bank withdrawal or credit card. It can be easy to end up paying too much for a long time, and often you won’t be able to get your money back.
Be careful out there!
Years ago in a rental house our water bills were so high. We were trying to imagine why we were using more water. When the bill got even higher and what we thought unreasonable the city came out to check the water and found a leak. It was fixed but they did not reduce our bill or give us the back credit and told us the owners were responsible. Needless to say these rich people told us it was probably our fault it leaked and we got no help.
We learned a big lesson that day.
I’m sorry to hear that. I believe you should have had resource under the law/regulations.
You know, if we had been the owners we probably would have realized it sooner and had it taken care of. Renters in a new city we just thought water was more expensive.. you know at the time there was no internet to even ask questions… by the time we questioned it too much time had passed really.
Lessons learned and there have been many in 30.5 years!
I get stronger, more knowledgeable and less afraid to ask and do every year. Plus I realized that the sooner you can read kanji and speak Japanese the more you can figure out on your own.
“…then we had to submit proof of the repair as well as water bills from previous years (to show what our normal consumption looks like) to the water company…”
You had to prove to the water company how much you normally pay the water company? That’s a classic example of Japanese bureaucracy that is worthy of being displayed in the Museum of Modern Inefficiency.
Heh, I know, right? You’d think they would have that information somewhere 😉
This is good to know!
Too Funny/Scary.
It happens everywhere. States. Europe. Latin America. It is good to pay attention to your bills.