Silly Little Country

Silly Country - Enbridge Version

The latest tizzie in Canada (maybe just around here) is about heart-stopping bills coming from Enbridge, our energy (specifically, in my case, natural gas) distribution utility.
To be honest, I was a bit surprised by my July bill which amounted to $156 (which I suspect would not even be noticed by Al Gore or Sean Penn). But when I saw it I was not surprised. I had been puzzled all winter by their bills - for example, my April bill told me I had a $67 credit. but also documented that my gas charges billed to date were almost $450 and my BBP instalments billed to date were only around $230.
BBP is their billing strategy to equalize monthly payments over the year and it was evident to me that my statements telling me I was in a credit status were to a degree erroneous and so I was generally paying $100 every month (totally against this claim of credit).
Now this did amuse me and I wondered when the rubber would hit the road. And, as it turns out, people like the environmentalist Al Gore (people whose carbon footprints are astonishingly unlike me in my semi-detached Toronto east-end unit) are finally facing their annual reckoning and whining loudly to the CBC and other sympathetic organizations, because their year-account-clearing numbers, incompetently calcuated by Enbridge (well, incompetently during the year, but competently NOW), are enormous.
What is delightful to me is that whatever glitch the Enbridge billing system had is making it a LOT clearer to a lot of dumb inattentive people roughly what their annual natural gas costs are. They are getting billed on ONE day for a lot of it (I am not). I love hearing the pigs squeal in pain. Keep it up.
I suspect that if Enbridge is politically smart it will amortize some of these costs over next year, leaving the squealing pigs totally puzzled over their monthly bills.
I still read mine and puzzle over them. And now retired with no income, I do care a lot more.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 12:28 PM