Bills

Negotiating with utility companies

A few weeks back, I put up a post about living paycheck to paycheck . I said I’d start a series on how to start making a change in your financial lifestyle. Here are the first 2 posts in the series:

Today I’m going to talk about options with your utility bills. Living in Canada, we get some pretty extreme weather – any where from 30 C to minus 30 C (It doesn’t get this cold where I live, thank goodness). So, that means we can rack up some pretty high heating bills in the winter and air conditioning bills in the summer. This post isn’t going to cover how to cut those costs – but what to do if you can’t pay your bills.

So,what do you do?

1. Have your most recent bill or bills in front of you. You can’t get started if you don’t have your account number and billing information.

2. Call the company. They all should have contact information on their bills – you’ll likely want to call either a billing number if they have one, or a customer service number.

3. Explain the situation. You don’t have to get into tons details about how you got into your present situation – you simply have to explain that right now, you can’t cover your bills as they are, and ask what your options are.

4. As with credit card companies, if the person on the phone can’t help you, ask for someone else. Utility companies are less likely than credit card companies to shave money off your payments, but some of them do offer hardship programs, or options that allow to spread costs out evenly over the year.

Have you ever had to negotiate with a utility company? What have you done to make your utility bills more manageable?

A guest post on what to do if you can’t pay your bills

31. July 2012 · 2 comments · Categories: Bills, Guest Posts

This is a guest post from Siobhan at http://www.icantpaymybill.com,

There are many circumstances that can lead to not being able to pay bills. There is also an undeniable social stigma involved in being unable to pay a bill. ICantPayMyBill.com was founded as a support forum for people who, for whatever reason, find themselves in this uncomfortable situation. If you find yourself saying, “I can’t pay my phone bill” or “I can’t pay my electric bill”, then this website is for you. Credit card bills and utility bills add up, and unexpected expenses can often mean that you find yourself short on cash, even if you had mapped out your finances in advance. So, if you’ve fallen behind, how do you go about paying overdue bills? Icantpaymybill.com offers an extensive research database and learning center for how to pay off bills and repair credit. We invite you to browse our library of bill paying tips and guides, and we’re confident that you’ll find a helpful resource that will allow you to get out of debt quickly and efficiently, and to get back to financial stability. Whether it’s credit-lending department stores like a Wal-Mart bill, a grocery store bill, or a Macy’s bill, or a utility bill like your phone bills, heating bills, or electric bills, this website has researched the best ways to pay, the worst possible outcome (creditors calling, repossession), and how other people who couldn’t pay that particular bill have dealt with the problem.

Many people who can’t pay a bill will instinctively begin dodging calls and invoices, and ignoring them. This shutdown is not healthy. Instead, typically, we recommend the direct approach—actually contact the company—and you’ll see we have tried to provide contact information for the accounts receivable department of many major businesses. You’ll be surprised, often companies will work with you to actually help pay bills, since they would rather get some money than no money at all. We’ve put together a great collection of bill paying strategies that we think anyone who has fallen behind with payments should read and execute on.

If you find this website helpful, please let us know. Also, please contribute by sharing any experiences, successful or not, you’ve had paying your bills. Our aim is to build an open community where people who feel overwhelmed by bills can come to share experiences, talk about what’s worked and what hasn’t, and ultimately find a solid bill paying solution. Thanks for reading!

My take on this: They do have some helpful tips on this Web site, and I certainly agree that it’s not a good idea to dodge invoices and bills. If you do check out the site, please do comment and let me know what you think.

A tale of caution: What can happen if you don’t pay attention to your bills

22. May 2012 · 5 comments · Categories: Bills, Wasting money · Tags: cancellation, insurance, premiums

This tale comes to you courtesy of one of my co-workers. I’ll use his real name it cause it’s John, which is pretty darned generic.

John was married, but has been divorced for a long time now. Apparently, he bought his ex-wife a very expensive engagement ring, and they’d taken out a rider (basically, extra insurance) on the ring through their home insurance. When the marriage ended, and John moved out, he cancelled his home insurance and the extra rider on it. He then set up new car and home insurance with the same company, just on a new place.

He was billed separately for the home and car insurance, and wasn’t keeping very good track of how often the bills came in for them. So, for over 9 years, he didn’t realize that he was actually getting three bills – one for his house, one for his car, and one for the rider on the engagement ring. For some reason, it hadn’t been cancelled along with his old home insurance. No, I don’t know how you’d miss this for 9 years, but if you aren’t paying attention, it can happen.

So, eventually John wised up, and went back to his insurance company. They had a record of his original cancellation, including the cancellation of the rider. They cut him a cheque for 5000 dollars (I know, I asked – apparently this *still* wasn’t as much as the ring cost). Well, they actually cut it to him and his ex-wife, but he eventually got that straightened out.

I guess the moral of the story here is that you should always read your bills, and double-check when you’ve cancelled something that is has actually been cancelled. When Mr. Canuck Buck and I got married, my parents covered the honeymoon suite as a gift. When we checked out, we almost did not look at the bill as we thought it would be rude, but we decided to after all. I am glad we did, as another suite had ordered a bottle of champagne, and they had put it on our bill! We sorted it out, but my parents either would have paid it, or had no way later on to prove we had not ordered it.

Have you ever run into a situation where you were billed for something you had cancelled?