Wednesday, July 08, 2009



Water...

This morning, after the kids ate b-fast, I sent them back to brush their teeth and the next thing I heard was "MOMMY - OUR WATER ISN'T WORKING"! Hmmm...that's odd,...I went back to check and sure enough, no water. So, I sent them to my bathroom...but, same thing there. So, then (like a bunch of dumbo's), we went in to the kitchen expecting the problem to be solved in there...but still, no water. I immediately called Chad (who is gone on a business trip to Atlanta) and told him our dilemna...and he called the water company. During the 15 minutes of waiting...this is what transpired...

1) The kids needed to rinse their mouths (they still had toothpaste in their mouths)...I scrounge a bottle of water for them to rinse.
2) The dishwasher begins sounding gosh-awful and I suddenly realize I had started a load BEFORE I knew we had no water. I immediately shut it off and let it drain.
3) Shep starts dancing around saying he needs to pee...cue Rauly...she starts dancing too...I send them to the bathroom and hear them flush. Grreeaat...how long it will be till I can flush the toilet again?!?!
4) A crash of thunder and a bolt of lighting...our lights flicker...I pray to God that we won't lose our water AND our electricity...the lights stay on, but the rain start fallin'!
5) My blood pressure goes up about 20 knotts!

Chad calls back and tells me that although WE paid our water bill ON TIME, for some reason, the post office didn't deliver our check as quickly as the water company needed it. Therefore, without a curteousy call, letter or knock on the door, they shut our water off. He paid over the phone (including the $30 fee to turn the water back ON) and said they'd be out as soon as possible. BUT, for a stay-at-home pregnant mom with a 5 year old boy and a 3 year old girl...that not going to suffice. SO, I made my phone call and spoke with the supervisor.

Me: "Hello, I am calling to inform you that our water was wrongfully shut off (without any notice) and I would like it to be turned back on immediately."
Supervisor: "I'm very sorry ma'am, but turning it back on immediately is not possible...it will most likely be turned back on around 5pm."
Me: literally seeing red...taking deep breaths and wishing I could stick my hand through the phone to throttle her. "Ok, let me explain...I have a 5 year old and a 3 year old...I'm also 32 weeks pregnant and am having to use the restroom every 5 minutes. This is completely unacceptable as we paid our bill on time and had you given us the courtesy of a simple phone call, this disaster could have been avoided. And YES ma'am...in the life of a stay-at-home pregnant mother, THIS IS AN EMERGENCY. SO, like I already said, I would like the man who shut our water off to turn back around and turn it back on."

She then rambled on and on about how they turn an avg of 60 homes water off PER DAY and that they serve 45,000 people and there was no way that they could make a phone call to every home that pays late. (OOOOHHH....but it wasn't OUR fault that the bill was paid late!) But here's the kicker....

She had the audacity to tell me that I should be thankful that it was raining cats and dogs outside, b/c that would give me the ability to go outside and collect water in a bucket in order to use THAT to flush our toilets. She also said the MOST people have bottled water and surely I had a few bottles lying around somewhere. (Again...I was seeing red and thought to myself I very well may go in to labor today!)

I tell ya' what...I've worked in administration and so has Chad...we both understand needing to collect debts. But I've never heard of discontinuing someone's service due to ONE LATE PAYMENT - without so much as a warning or a "heads-up" as to what's about to happen. We didn't even know that they hadn't received our payment and had we known, we would've paid immediatley with a credit card by phone. It just seems so disrespectful and inhumane.

Ok. Guess I should stop typing and go start collecting water outside. Haha! I will say that this has opened my eyes to how much I have taken for granted our luxuries and how easy everything is (when your bills get paid) if you live in America. I just can't imagine living in a foreign country, having to carry buckets of water from neighborhing cities...I'm so thankful that we are blessed to live in a place where we have clean running water!!!

11 comments:

Jenny said...

Lindsey, I had a similar situation with those insane water people--they're ridiculous!! Did they tell you to write a letter to the Board of Directors? That's what they told me....by the time I finished talking to them, I thought my head was going to explode. :-)

Kristin said...

That's awful that the water people gave you such a hard time! Hopefully it will be turned back on soon! We really enjoyed seeing Chad and meeting Rick. Ryan did put them to work....I told him that they wouldn't ever come back to visit us he worked them so hard! Next time you and the kids will have to tag along!

Michael and Hannah said...

Poor thing! I feel your pain... when I was pregnant with Anna Kate I was in the shower with Wesley because we'd just taken a walk and had gotten all sweaty. We both had major suds going in our hair, and the water STOPS. I put on a robe, looked out the window, and saw a truck down the road. They had cut off the water for the whole street to install something at a neighbor's house. I am usually not a confrontational person, but I hopped in my car WITH my robe WITH my sudsy hair WITH my wet sudsy baby and drove the two houses down to roll down my window and give them a piece of my mind!! They were like, "Well we can't warn everybody when we have to turn the water off." Really?? Why not? I was not.a.happy.camper. Hope you survived!

Lindsey Eason said...

All's well in the world...our water was turned back on. Our toilets are flushing and I can take a shower...yay!

Anonymous said...

i wont even begin to tell you what was going through my mind while I was reading that...being who I am, you can probably figure out what I would have said or done.

Whitney said...

What a disaster, Lindsey! Glad life is back to "normal" in the Eason world. Thanks for commenting on my blog! I'm back to the land of the {blog} living, so hopefully we'll "run into each other" more often! :-)

Teresa said...

Someday you will be able to laugh about this ...maybe??!!
I had to chuckle when you wrote that the lady told you to collect the rain water. That was hilarious!!!

Melody said...

LOL! Sorry but I had a good laugh at this. If it makes you feel any better a few months ago we had our cable turned off for non-payment. Well we paid but they said it wasn't the correct amount. We never got a bill, or a phone call. I was not happy about it.

You can't compare water and cable though. You had it much worse!

Jamie said...

OMG!!!!!!!!! I can't believe that!!!
Guess you'll start doing the online bill-pay and avoid the post office altogether??
And I'm wondering HOW LONG you'd have to collect water in order to get the gallon or more required to flush a toilet????

Page said...

This EXACT same thing happened to us almost two years ago. I just happened to be running the kitchen water when it all of a sudden turned off. Rob saw the meter man for the city and went outside to find out what was going on. They said they cut our water b/c the bill wasn't paid, only they never mailed out the bill and I just hadn't thought about it yet since it wasn't the end of the month (when I do all my reconciling). I was LIVID. I hopped in the car and drove to the city department and had WORDS with the employees. They were all "It doesn't matter if the bill doesn't get to you, you're still responsible for payment." I said many things about what a corrupt city it was and maybe a few choice words as well. They made me pay the fee to turn it back on and I talked all about how this was a scam and they could claim anything just to get extra fees....well, wouldn't you know that the next month we received a credit on our bill for the fee and the month after that a credit for the entire water bill?!? Apparently, a bunch of people complained since the bills weren't mailed out. AND, just this year the city was dissolved by vote and we're now part of the county instead of that city. You could definitely write in a complaint to the city manager and maybe get your fee back. I TOTALLY know how you feel!!

Page said...

Oh, and it seems to me that it would be very easy to set up an automatic voice message system to call people and warn them that their payments haven't been received. Okay, I'll get off my soapbox...I just remember how upset I was before and you going through that with two kids and pregnant....It's just so wrong!