It's sad to see the small businesses disappear. It's one of the things that made America great. Now we're subjected to the whims of bigger and bigger comments.
When we sold our house in May, we didn't pay an electric bill (for 53 cents) because we were vacating in six days. In addition, their online system wouldn't accept a payment less than $1.00. They threatened to disconnect my service if I didn't pay within two weeks. When I got the final bill, I ended up giving them a dollar as it was cheaper to do that (final bill was 88 cents) rather than writing a check and adding a stamp.
The same electric company is after the owner of where I'm staying right now, pending approval of my British visa. The electric company installed a new digital meter a few days before I moved in, so the meter read 000 kilowatts used. The beginning of July, the owner received a bill for over $700 as they estimated he had used 2,714 kilowatts. The meter read eleven. The beginning of August, he received a bigger estimated bill for 3,352 kilowatts used and he owed over $1,200. The actual meter reading: sixteen kilowatts. They refuse to send someone out to check the meter because they can't get an actual reader meeting and they've done away with the people going around reading the meters. But they did send someone to disconnect the power. Another example of big business trying to intimidate consumers.
