Monday, May 19, 2008

Electric bill and.... linguistic confusion???

When I moved from Aguada to Patillas I asked the electric authority to close my account there, but not on the last day of March, when i moved, but on April 10, because a friend were staying in my Aguada appartment till that time and she needed electricity.

So, come April 11 I went to Guayama to the local office of the same electric authority to enquire whether my account in Aguada had, in fact, been closed. They said it was not. I then asked them to please, pretty please, close it, since I no longer lived there. I also gave them my current adress to send me my deposit.
They asked me if I wanted to have an account at the new place, but I repeated that the adress is solely for them to mail me the last bill and send me back my deposit. I explained that I stayed at the new place temporarily, and my friend, who owned the house wanted to keep the account in her name. OK, they understood. They were very helpful and gave me the amount I owed for March (it was $74) and allowed me to pay it there, but could not give me a meter reading.
Oh, well, a month have passed and I received a very strange electric bill: with a new meter number, for 8 days of use (though only about $8, which was a BIG difference from my first electric bill in Aguada, also for 8 days) + unpaid previous bill suspiciously close to the amount I paid for March in Aguada.
I though it was a serious mistake and planned to go to the electric authority to try to straighten it out, but was under a few deadlines, so I postponed it.
Then I got an email from my friend that it appears I changed the electric account in her house (the casita I live in) from her name to mine, although I was not supposed to do that, but "whatever makes me happy".

No, it did not make me happy at all... but by now I am getting used to Puerto Rico, so it did not make me mad, either.
It just made me shrug my arms in resignation: now it seemed to me a normal occurence on the island dealing with local authorities: EVERYTHING that can - and a lot of things that you can't imagine could -WILL get messed up due to, say, "linguistic confusion"...
Because it can't be a total incompetence, or can it?

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