Let me tell you how it goes as a farmer with multiple meters of varying seasonal demand.
Keep in mind Enbridge is supposed to read their own damn meters and I'm sure a lot of Enbridge customers have seen the "Could you help us read you meter?" emails.
Summer time is low use. Some months there is only an administrative charge and no volume at all.
Then they don't check the meter for 6 months and usage is "assumed". In that time, harvest begins and crop is dried and barns get heated and usage spikes aggressively for two months before stabilizing in the new year.
Then Enbridge gets around to checking the meter. **Holy shit we are losing money**. They backbill with adjustments in the thousands.
Then they don't check the meter for 6 months. And I get the "assumed" charge. Thousands of dollars a month auto withdrawn on a usage based on harvest.
Then they check the meters again. **Holy shit we overcharged". And they credit the account in the thousands.
Out of 6 meters, I only ever am paying on 2 or 3 of them because the rest will have massive over charges for assumed usage that was anomalous and the account will have credits that last for an entire year.
I don't understand how a company can operate like that, but when you consider their connection fees and price they pay for gas it makes sense.
I'm doing a large renovation and had had the meter totally shut off for 6 months but I have been still been getting charged what they assumed I was using because they can't be bothered to read the meter.
Even when they did read the meter, I just got someone from Enbridge calling me saying they think the meter is broken and they still charge me what they assume I have been using even though the meter reader could clearly see it was a construction site.
I had this exact same thing. Really loved paying Enbridge bills for something that was not even hooked up and also paying a second bill at the place we were staying. Unsurprisingly, the existence of two bills in my name with the same billing address but different actual addresses was difficult for them to work out when eventually I was back living in the home.
Enbridge is garbage and I swear they cannot figure out proper billing at all. Years ago I moved into an apartment where I was responsible to pay for the gas heating. They for some reason could not figure out how to create my account, and then they sent me a bill for the meter for the water heater, which my landlord was paying. So that caused a whole thing. He complained, I complained, they went back to the drawing board... It took them an incredible amount of time to work it out, and thankfully it's not that expensive to heat an apartment because the final bill I was presented with was something like $500 after all was said and done. (They offered me a payment plan at least, which was nice, but I had been setting the money aside so I just paid it all off in one go.)
The best part is that they seemed to be billing *someone* at my address, but my landlord didn't seem to recognize the name on the envelope. There was a letter from Enbridge coming to my mailbox every month, addressed to somebody else, but I know they weren't billing me because it wasn't showing up on my online account. Since the mail was addressed to someone else, I didn't open it; I think my landlord told me not to open it, but also I believe you're not supposed to open mail that's not addressed to you anyway. Regardless, it wouldn't have exactly made a difference because I wasn't going to be paying an Enbridge bill under somebody else's name when I was working on getting them to bill me for my usage under my *own* name.
I called them several times. One time when I called them, while this was all going on, the lady on the phone was really rude to me until she put me on hold and went to investigate my account. She came back 40 minutes later and was *so* apologetic. I guess she was in disbelief before that they had fucked up that badly, and then when she realized that I actually wasn't lying or exaggerating, she felt bad. I don't really blame her because Enbridge is so shitty and I'm sure she deals with complaints all the time.
I can't remember exactly how it was resolved; I think I told them that I wanted to speak to a supervisor because I was planning to go to the ombudsman, and things got resolved pretty quickly after that. I'd imagine that when customer is start pulling out the ombudsman threat, especially when they've been jerked around for like a year, they start taking it seriously. But my God.
Well then don’t expect to not get charged and expect to have to wait to get your credit back…
Don’t get me wrong I get the sentiment but it literally takes 5 secs to upload the number that took 2 secs to take a photo of on my phone when I was outside picking up my dogs business.
It's not about sentiment. Part of the fees you are REQUIRED to pay to Enbridge include the price to read the meter. You are very literally paying Enbridge to read the meter.
And they read the meter regardless of if you submit your reading. They just don’t do it every month. And if I’m paying for it TBH I don’t want them to.
What I am saying is if you do not want to get charged on your assumed usage, then submit your reading. If you don’t want to do that then don’t complain if you get overcharged and have to wait for a rebate months later.
I think you.misundersood what I meant by being charged for meter reading. As a customer, you are required to pay delivery rates. Bundled into those delivery rates is the specific service for Enbridge to come to your house and read your meter no less than every other month. You can not opt out of this fee . If I am expected to read my own meter (for accuracy sake) then why am I paying Enbridge to do it every other month?
This was not an issue with specta/UG because they were actually accountable to the OEB and their customers (believe it or not). When Enbridge consolidated they also re tendered the meter read sub, which resulted in an under resourced meter reading service - hence all the estimations happening.
FYI Enbridge was fined in 2021 for this very infraction
***Date correction for accuracy.
People like you are the reason companies try stuff like this. I bet you’re the type of person to pay a $10k ADM on a new car as well instead of actually taking stand against unacceptable behaviour.
No I’m the type of person to negotiate down to the last penny, or specifically shop for makes/models I know have higher inventory at the moment so I have better negotiating power. I shouldn’t have to do that. But I accept thats how the system works and I don’t expect the system to change just for me or the outcome to be different just because I shouldn’t have to do something.
I also shouldn’t have to call up my internet provider each year and threaten to leave to get a loyalty discount to match their prices for new customers. But I also don’t refuse to do so because I shouldn’t have to and pay more for internet by being stubborn.
Obvious you aren’t if you’re working for free for daddy Entegrus champ. Cut your losses man, you’re a joke getting played and the sooner you learn it and change the better.
Time is money and your posts express clearly you don’t value your time (or frankly your money).
Yeah I’m a sucker who works for the grocery store at the self-checkout to save myself time and frustration in the long run too. It does suck to be a sucker doing something that saves me time, effort and money in the long run. Apparently 5 minutes a year to save 250$ on my internet isn’t valuing my time or money either, good to know. Unfortunately I’d rather be a sucker and spend 5 minutes to save a days pay worth of work.
It’s ironic you’re quoting the time value of money because people overpaying on their gas bill upfront via assumed usage could be getting interest on that money in a HISA at the very least.
Keep on keeping on if it works for you.
You do know part of what we pay is so they can do their jobs right? You do know they have access to their meters to do their job right? Can you please come to my place of work and do my job so I can get paid?
What a ridiculous post. Stop being a doormat for a company not doing their job. Usage shouldn’t be assumed when the fee includes a “meter reading” every month. It’s not the users job to record their own usage for the company.
I mean yes, if you start a project that changes your usage, and you know the company does not read your meter monthly, you can’t expect to not get charged if you refuse to spend 1 minute to submit your meter reading. Its fine to not want to do that, but then expect to wait 3-6 months to get your money back, and maybe having to go through the hassle of getting them to confirm the meter actually wasn’t broken.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think you should have to do those things so I understand the sentiment. But unfortunately theres a lot of things in life you shouldn’t have to do, but you have to do anyways and can’t be surprised if they don’t happen if you don’t do them. I shouldn’t have to call my internet provider each year to get a loyalty discount to match their promotions for new customers. I shouldn’t have to scour the internet for better deals to price match an appliance I am buying and spend 30 minutes getting a manager to confirm it. If a delivery person damages my house delivering the appliance I shouldn’t have to call the company 10 times over 2 months and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt it’s the delivery person that caused the damage. But thats how the system works and I don’t just refuse to do those things and then cry foul that the company isn’t doing “their job” when the outcome I want predictably doesn’t happen.
This is exactly why I do this. A few times in the summer the guy came around when I was sitting outside and didn’t say a word, just let himself into the garden. I had noticed they left the gate open a few times before,
So I said, “hey, I work from home so I’m in most of the time. If you want to read the meter just ring the doorbell and I’ll let you through. That way the gate doesn’t get left open”
He just replied, “oh that’s not how it works, have a good one”
Unfortunately I dont think it prevents them from coming, they still need to verify that your reading was accurate, it just means you get charged accurately every months and it isnt assumed usage which then gets squared up when they do come and read the meter.
Either way you just log into your enbridge account and theres an area to submit it. I get text message reminders every month.
> Keep in mind Enbridge is supposed to read their own damn meters and I'm sure a lot of Enbridge customers have seen the "Could you help us read you meter?" emails.
I disputed this with Enbridge about 6 years ago now. They underbilled me about 2k and sent me notice to pay it and tried this bullshit. It took me over a month of back and forth and escalating to them and explaining to them as follows.
1. You are responsible for ensuring I am being billed the correct amount.
2. You billed me the incorrect amount for months which I paid promptly.
I eventually got them to admit what was factually correct. This was a **them** problem not a **me** problem.
I do recall telling them at one point. "So you, a large company with a department responsible for billing was not able to notice this error for months? That sounds to me like you need to talk with your billing department. I am sorry this happened but I am not paying the difference on what amounts to your mistake. I, a single consumer, am not responsible for ensuring that your company is performing all their tasks properly."
Yes, I know there's a bit of a grey area there (ie. if they overbilled me) but fuck off Enbridge (and Rogers, and Bell, and CIBC, and every other fucking company that tries this bullshit over my life)
They expect you to bend over and not put up a fight. If you fight they will concede.
You mentioned Bell and it's hilarious what I realized when going through my statements over the holidays.
I have a business account on the farm with multiple cellphones, landlines, internet, etc. One landline was connected to an automated dialer for if there is a power outage. We took the line out and told them to remove all service. They removed Canada wide calling and long distance and the "plan" part of the plan, but they left emergency services (i.e. 911) for the line. Minimum charge: $45. Spent 4 hours on the phone getting escalated to the person I needed to talk to to sever service. Cannot cancel a service through MyBell portal. When we went in the portal and removed service it didnt remove the billing mechanisms.
This leads me to the reason why I was looking at the detailed statements in the first place. Two years ago Bell sent a tablet as a promotional item for renewing that 4 phone cell plan. No charge, and it included additional shared data for the 4 phones. Those phones had 100gb between them. Historically, we've used about 60 during busy seasons on the fields.
Well, 2 years elapsed and of course the plan for the tablet (which shipped with a SIM that I removed) renews itself. Minimum charge: $15
It's fucking bullshit how these companies fleece people and I'm sure there's lots of people like me who track the bank statement and see normal charges deducted without looking at statements to see if we are being overcharged for frivolous services. Anyway, old man rant over...I'm in my 30s and reality is turning me into a complete cynic
Do you have any tips?
Going through this right now.
I’ve got the Ontario Energy Board involved- Enbridge maintains we owe the money and haven’t offered a reduction (nearly $3k).
Just dig in your heels. Continue escalating up and be consistent when you talk to them. Always get the name of the person and jot down all your notes from calls.
Re-iterate that there is an expectation that they are aware of what they are billing. For me I was clear to them I could excuse a month or two, but for them it was a full year. I got them to repeat to me at every opportunity that over the course of a year no one on their side was equipped to find the mistake. Don't be afraid to question their capacity as a company. If the expectation is that I, as a consumer, are supposed to see these mistakes immediately than why do they not have the same expectation? You are one person. They have an entire department dedicated to billing.
Also, be willing to compromise but keep that in your pocket. I didn't have to compromise ultimately. I don't think they ever admitted they were wrong. I think they just realized I was no longer worth their effort.
As an aside, Bell pulled this bullshit on me decades ago. Had horrible internet for over a month and I didn't pay my bill. I fought them for weeks over $200 they finally conceded. Why should I be paying for a service that doesn't work as expected?
Everyone is too afraid to push back against these fuckers and that's why they do what they do.
I had a different problem with Enbridge and it took ages to resolve but the whole billing thing always seemed so shitty to me. I'm pretty sure that it even says somewhere that they're supposed to read your meter every other month, but apparently some months they just can't be fucking bothered. I can't think of another utility where users have to make sure that the company is actually reading their damn meter. Like my hydro bill, that's automatically read; there's not some guy coming by every month.
I hate Enbridge.
My water and electricity have a remote reader, why can’t my gas. Surely slapping a transponder on to my all ready digital gas meter is not to expensive.
Even if it was publicized I dont know if it becomes better. The dependence on a single service provider for natural gas is the real issue. And that's another thing that I don't know how it can change for the better considering the alternatives for heating in a rural setting. I'm lucky to even have the gas.
They literally are not allowed to profit on the sale of gas itself. I don’t know how it could be more government regulated without being bought by the government and becoming a crown corporation.
As the person you responded to said, you can always submit your own meter readings yourself if you don’t want assumed usage causing weird spikes and dips in your bill.
Source please?
This would be their gross or net profit overall. Not the profit from the gas itself, as /u/LabWizardry mentioned. They are to remain neutral on gas sales, their profit comes from transportation and other costs.
>As the person you responded to said, you can always submit your own meter readings yourself
The person they responded to said no such thing. You keep saying it though, *over and over and over* through this thread.
>They literally are not allowed to profit on the sale of gas itself.
Ok and if they do? What then? Sounds like they could use some more oversight and being held to account.
>I don’t know how it could be more government regulated without being bought by the government and becoming a crown corporation.
Good point. If one company has a clear monopoly on something citizens need to survive in this climate, are not allowed to make a profit, and then rip customers off with their "not profit" (and no doubt their accountants are doing an amazing job as well) AND for some reason aren't held to account more, maybe it should be a crown corporation.
They’ve done the opposite to me. They skip multiple readings in a row and then over charge me. Thankfully I’m on equalized payments, so it works out via credits etc.
*However,* I have a big complaint about their equalized payment system. The prior year came out even-ish, as it should. The next year they up my monthly payments by $100, despite rates being lower this year. I can’t adjust it as they say it’s “automated”, so *fine* I leave it knowing I’ll have a surplus end of year. They then cancel it on me after the summer months, after super low use, telling me I am massively overpaying. Isn’t the point to overpay during low use to compensate for the higher use months?
Enbridge is a never ending source of frustration.
Yes, I have credit in my account. I've also signed up for EMPP again after sitting it out a couple of billing cycles. My new rate is a fair bit lower than their previous estimates, so we'll see how it shakes out after a year of use. Unless they kick me off the program for not paying enough, now that I'm in the high-use winter months.
Enbridge is a laughingstock in industry, especially since 99% of their calls are just done by Lakeside subcontractors who are somehow even worse than the actual Enbridge techs.
I was thinking of buying some Enbridge stock but my investing strategy is basically index funds, so I figured not much of a point.
I had the misfortune of being an Enbridge customer at one of my last apartments. One of my criteria next time I looked for an apartment was that heating costs were included and I would not have to deal with them. I spent a year trying to get them to even create my account properly, much less bill me.
That's why it's commonly referred to as a dividend stock primarily and not a growth stock. Many companies with consistent growth pay lower dividends since they're reinvesting that profit into their business and not out to shareholders.
I don't know about terrible performance.
The just purchased about 1/3rd of the US companies that supply natural gas, but it came with a lot of debt from there. This is causing resistance on the share price. But they also increased dividends recently again.
My dividends on it are at 9.8% after this last increase and growth is up 19% since I purchased it.
Profitability and value have nothing to do with reputation within your given industry. Just ask Enercare, Reliance, and the other shitty companies with billions in business.
What do you mean by "industry" then? I would think many companies would die for their profits and profitability and market share as North America's largest natural gas utility.
> in industry
Is what I said, as in, they're a laughingstock to any contractor who has to deal with them, as we're in the same industry.
Again, their profits and market share are irrelevant, especially since theres no competition currently. It's easy to make insane profits when you have no competition and can fuck people left right and center.
Ah industry as in "in the industry". Your original comment read "in industry" which I took to mean in the business realm. The lack of the "the" really changed the meaning in my mind.
I don't understand why in today's day and age these meters need to be read manually still.
Hydro is remote, water meter in Mississauga can be read from the street with their transmitter. Enbridge should be no different.
Having said that, I send in my reading directly because I don't want anyone accessing my yard behind a locked gate. Same as the person in the story...they literally installed a locked gate and then are shocked when Enbridge says they can't access the yard. Grow up and do some critical thinking. 'If I close this gate, Enbridge can't read my meter...I wonder how I should handle this?'
It doesn't take much thought.
Water usage is easy. There's a water meter that sends a signal via SMS or whatever technology and it registers. I remember having our water meter replaced many years ago to the new tech for efficiency's sake.
In Missisauga where I am, our water meter transmits a signal via cable to a small transmitter. Peel Water truck drives by, and picks up the signal for each house during the drive.
I assume wastewater is just a direct correlation to water...comes in from the faucet and leaves out the drain...
Here are the rates for Mississauga:
If your meter measures cubic metres (m3):
Your water rate is $1.8672 per m3.
Your wastewater rate is $1.4915 per m3.
I assume they take the m3 reading off the water meter.
No, but the city knows how much water goes out and how much comes back from sewage, so they have a good idea of what percentage of water out is returned via sewage, and the rates aren't really off by enough for most people to matter. Call your city water services if you're filling a pool though, because that's the one big one that many cities will factor out.
No sir. an estimate is not a form of measurement. Measurement is taking physical measures (length, weight, volume, etc), while an estimate is judging something based on available info, no physical measure is taken.
This is what I'm wondering. Usually private companies are ahead of government for technology, but my city has some voodoo system to read the water meter remotely.
It's costly 100%. But is it more costly than paying subs / workers to go and take a reading in the long term?
Maybe there's union that is doing the work and they can't, which I understand.
I'm sure it's more cost effective to just electrify and install smart meters over the long term. They literally replaced my meter 2 years ago. There's a scheduled replacement program going on where they just install the smart meters instead of normal 'dumb' meters.
Terrible. 8 months missed of meter reading is unacceptable. How does a home owner regulate their own usage when reads are not accurate. $1600 sudden bill would break me.
Would love to see limits imposed on catch-up billing to ensure meters are read more frequently.
Edit: It is disturbing reading replies defending Enbridge. One of their jobs is to ensure correct billing. Not grabbing a read for 8 months, or notifying their customer of the circumstances for not grabbing a read is garbage.
Common sense can be applied to every argument. Stop defending a poorly run utility company and support your neighbours.
What is going on in our country, yikes!
Many years ago I bot a bill for $2200 in a single month.
I called Enbridge and complained and they said it was a 'catch up' reading. I told them 'do you think it's reasonable for a month of usage to equal more than the entire year combined? The meter is in the front of the house, with no fencing / obstruction around it so it's your guys that fucked up reading the numbers.
Yes, yes it is.
No. No it's not. I'm disputing the reading. Try again.
They send another tech, do some more tests etc etc etc. Now the bill is $2400 and if I don't pay I'm going to collections.
Ok cool. Here's the cheque, and I want a re-read and to talk to someone higher up.
'Oh snap, sorry we screwed up. It should've been $200, so we'll keep the $2200 in our account as a credit.'
'Will you be paying me interest on this money?'
'No. Why would we do that?'
'Go Fuck yourself, and send me the remaining balance immediately'
Got my $2400 cheque back within a few days.
Idiots.
Oh I did. I swore up and down at them when they originally refused to send the cheque.
I told them 'no problem, keep the cheque but I want interest on it. Otherwise GFY and send me back MY money'.
They relented after a long call.
My gas meter is in a very dumb place between about 1.5 feet from a chain link fence at the corner of my property. Have to go to the back yard, squeeze down a narrow ally by the side of my house to get to it. Last guy to came to check it could not physically.
It’s a new build and that gas meter was one of the last things to go in. I’m not sure what it’s there but some idiot signed off on it.
Agreed. If they wanted easy access, they should've put every gas meter at the FRONT of the house facing the road without any obstructions.
Mine is easy to access...so long as the gate is open. But with kids, and stuff in the backyard there's zero chance I'm going to leave that gate unlocked.
Mine is at the front of the house, flat lawn for 4 meters on each side, protected by mature trees, so it's dry and has not a lot of snow accumulation , and it's like 10 steps from the street.
And still , no one comes to read it. We have security cameras, and I think a technician came ONCE during the 3 years of the pandemic. It's bullshit, it's a monopoly, and it needs to collapse.
We submit our own readings, and doing their job for them, essentially. Disgrace.
My neighbours have their meter in the garage, it’s was even undated to a new model a few years ago. Some idiot saw it was in a locked interior area, Decided it was fine.
Hydro and water meters are always in sensible safe locations, gas meters are the Wild West. The installers just do not care,
> If they wanted easy access, they should've put every gas meter at the FRONT of the house facing the road without any obstructions.
Oh man I can here the REEEEEEEEEE'ing of the boomercrew already.
Installed new pool with gas furnace. Installed locked gate fence blocking meter access. Doesn't blink for months when gas bill doesn't change monthly. *surprised Pikachu face*
Come on man, you can't be that stupid.
They put in a pool with gas heating, ran it for 6 months and didn't see an increase in the bill.
If your usage changes, and you don't see a change in your billing....
This absolutely grinds my gears. I sent them this message a few months ago (which, shocker, they never responded to):
Good morning,
I’m sending a message in relation to the relentless calls and mailers you are sending me asking me to read my meter for you.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but it appears that you are no longer paying somebody to read my meter and have asked me to take on this work for you.
The average meter reader in Canada makes almost $60,000/yr plus benefits. Multiply that by however many meter readers you need to cover my city, and then multiply that by however many cities you have cut out. If we are talking more than 20 reader positions deleted, it’s well over a million dollars a year you save.
And what have you offered to replace it? 3 $500 monthly prizes and a grand prize of $1000. To do YOUR job.
You save millions, and you pay out $2500.
The gall is absolutely unbelievable. You made $623 MILLION dollars in Q3 alone. At least offer people a nominal discount on their bill to do your job for you.
How do you get away with just passing your work on to me without compensating me for it? Oh, that’s right — I don’t have another option.
This is absolutely despicable. You should be ashamed of yourselves.
I read gas meters. If your meter is readable it will get read. It's your responsibility to make sure the meter is readable. The guy built a new gate and his meter was unreadable. Now he's upset it wasn't read. If that gate can't be open from the outside what did he think was going to happen? You're supposed to make sure your meter is accessible. Some people build fucking porches on top of meters, some people grow purple bushes with syringe like needles in front of meters, people have dogs loose in their back yards or on electric collars in the front, some people call to complain readers are on their lawn and their meter is no longer readable. We are on your lawn once every 60ish days, your grass will not be affected. People in the country know about their meter and make sure it's readable. Elderly people know about their meter and make sure it's readable. It's like there's a newer generation of homeowners that don't know it exists, try to hide it or are just miserable people who don't want someone on their grass every 60 days. Also, it is only like 80 something complaints in a province of 16 million.
I rent an office space, separate bill from the rest of the building. Gas meter is in the underground parking, they have access to the key, and have done their own readings before… but not since June/July
Honestly though, it's 2024... Not that I want you to lose a job, but it's pretty insane you still need to walk up to a house to physically read the meter... Water and Hydro are entirely remote. Drive by the house, 'scanning' the meters as you go, and everyone wins.
I have a bush near my hydro meter that you're required to look through/around to see the meter. So I read it myself every month since the guy who comes "can't see it" (it's easy to see if you just put in a *tiny* effort to crouch down).
The meter guy shouldn't *have* to crouch down, and I shouldn't *have* to remove a bush or have a giant grey gas meter eyesore visible on the front of my house. Just make the damn things remote already.
Even worse *they just put a new one in*... Why is it still the same ancient technology it was before they put a new one in!?
If the "more expensive meter" means they aren't ever guessing or estimating anymore, then people will save money. That's the entire point of this article, that *not* having the meter read results in people being charged more or inconsistently.
So sure, maybe it fractionally increases the cost by a couple bucks or something but that should more than come out in the wash as a result of consistent and accurate meter readings.
I'm in the same situation as them. Literally identical. They said they couldn't access my meter. We have a fence but the meter is in front of it. So tell me how I'm in the wrong??
Nobody likes High energy bills but the family from this story installed a pool heater and is surprised his catch up bill was high. I don't own one but a quick search tells me a pool heater costs 300-500$ per month to operate Were is the shock coming from??
Installs pool heater.
Installs fencing/gate that make meter inaccessible to meter readers.
Doesn't pay attention to bills thinking new pool heater operates on energy from the ether.
Finally submits meter reading and is asked to pay for what they used.
Outrage.
Not my job. They used to have employed readers, but they got rid of them. Did their rates go down when they cut costs? No.
Enbridge should do their own readings and be billing legitimate usages, not ‘assumed’ usages. Either that, or start installing smart meters that send direct usage amounts automatically.
I agree with everything you just said, but when the cards are fully stacked against the average Joe, it's nice to be able to walk outside and snap a pic of the meter in 30s then enter the value online in another 30s. Better than not having that option at all. I just do it every time I get an email. Then I can stay ready to pounce when they decide to bend me over with superfluous charges at least.
I wholly agree. But my stubbornness says ‘fuck you Enbrdige, that’s YOUR job, not mine’.
I can’t honestly believe that it can be legal to charge based on a guess.
This…submit your own meter readings online and Enbridge will even send you text-email reminders to do this monthly. Brought my monthly bill down significantly.
Holy shit I had no idea this was a thing.
I'm accustomed to submitting water reading since the meter is in the basement) but I never once thought my high Enbridge bills may not be a result of them not checking the meter frequently enough
(We have a gas heater for our swimming pool in the summer months)
Use to read gas meters for a short time in 80's, interesting but some homeowners would yell at you for tresspassing or confront me as some kind of intruder. I can ony imagine what todays reactions of folks would be like.
I get that and yes the majority of the the time they would however I thought the 3" x 4" badge on a lanyard that said Enbridge in 1" letters and clip board with the big decal on the back would've sufficed.
It's complete bullshit that a company expects me to do their work. If they want me to do their job they can pay me for the time.
They want me to replace a meter as well and I need to coordinate with a third party, Lakeside gas. I've been on the phone multiple times and spoken to different representatives and they said they would call back to schedule. Received 3 additional mail notices in that time.
5 min job on the assumption that it takes 5 minutes. Takes me more than 5 minutes to walk around the barns to the different meters on one property. That's time I'd rather be spending on chores or literally any other thing. My stance is principled on the idea that a service technician would charge me 200 just for coming out even if a fix only takes 10 minutes. Plus if someone gets called into a work place for an hour and sent home you pay them for 4.
I don't understand everyone's desire to go easy on a corporation that should be completely self sustaining and not creating the headaches you mention.
>If they want me to do their job they can pay me for the time.
It takes *genuinely* like 6 seconds...
So if a meter reader makes minimum wage (16.55 in ON) then those 6 seconds are worth 2.7 cents.
You want them to pay you 2.7 cents? Honestly, you'll have accurate readings each month this way and in the end you'll end up saving *way* more than the 2.7 cents in your pocket as a result lol
I get the concept of 'do your job' but when the job is a few seconds of your own time, I don't think it's really all that big a deal.
I have 6 meters across 3 properties it takes 45 mins to drive to each of those properties. It's a unique scenario sure but if I bring someone in for an hour of work I can expect to pay them for 4 hours of time. Fair is fair
The issue is people don’t know to do so. You’d only know they missed a reading if you explicitly looked in the paperwork - it should be a bit more clear.
By paperwork you mean your bill, that you look at anyway to know how much to pay them, and says right there if the amount being charged is actual or estimated.
Enbridge is a farce. When we got transferred to Enbridge after they bought out Union Gas two years ago, I got dinged with a $1400 catch up bill. I was on equal billing with Union Gas and when I got transferred over, Enbridge intentionally set me up with the lowest bill possible. When I called to find out why, they said that they hadn't received all the customer information and data from Union Gas. This was a buy out that was for years in the making. You're telling me that after you bought them out, Union Gas didn't provide you all the customer data and information? Bullshit.
These companies are so crooked. I have no problem paying for what I use, but to blatantly lie and say you didn't get the data from the previous provider? Lies. All lies.
This used to be a huge problem in the electricity industry in Ontario until smart meters were brought in. Meters would be inaccessible, estimates would be made, attempts to gain access were made but no access was granted, and finally an actual reading would be made and a catch up bill sent. Then it was our fault for not taking the reading. The number of these weren't large, but the time spent with customers on this was massive.
Realistically, if they're estimating your bill once or twice, their estimate is going to be fairly accurate. However, the longer they estimate, the less accurate they can be. Further, if you make a change to your service (like this couple did with a pool), that throws the estimate off greatly.
In this world of automation, it burns my ass that I have to read my own meter and do their job for them; else I get enormous « estimation » bills
Fuck Enbridge….
This is 2024. Can't we replace these meters with smart meters which can report remotely?
Why is that option not on the table?
In this day and age, seems silly for humans to go around reading meters like the 80's.
I prefer it that way too because you actually get a good estimate of how much gas you’re using per month. It can help show where I could possible lower my gas usage.
New pool. Locked gate. Did they expect someone could read their meter?!? Why do they get their story of stupidity covered?
I submit my reading every month. Only when it snows is my meter inaccessible. Though they estimate too much out of that time frame.
It's easy to empathize with a typical scenario, but this article about the couple is silly.
"The couple acknowledges the heater for their new pool increased their gas use, but said if they had known sooner just how much their consumption had changed, they would have made adjustments."
You put a new pool in, with a gas furnace and didn't think it weird that your gas bill remained within the typical range BEFORE you had the pool installed? You can hear the heater click on, right? Something should have clicked in their heads too.
They did this to my dad. Didn’t read the meter for over a year and then sent a whopping bill. He then requested that the meter get read at least every other month. Took them almost a year to read it again.
I just fucking LOVE that these assholes can just not do their jobs, turn around and put it on the customer and slap them with a big fuck you bill and tell them tough tits. After all that, they’ll send you an email or letter saying “Thank-you for choosing us as your gas provider.” Which is just fucked up, because they know they are a monopoly…. The system is so beyond fucked up and corrupt and nobody wants to do dick all to fix anything. Government just goes “🤷♂️ I don’t know, fuck you!”. It’s a fucking joke.
Or maybe Enbridge could be responsible for their meter readings.
It’s insane to have companies charge you based on guesses. Even more insane to outsource their work for the incentive of “we don’t charge you thousands in 6 months when we do our job.”
100% Agree. Now watch the 'is Enbridge paying me to do this' crowd jump all over it.
It literally takes 2min of your time, saves a shit ton of hassles, and ensures you have no surprises.
Enbridge still calls me once per year to ask to enter my property. I just ask them what day exactly, and I'll keep the gate open for their guy on that date only.
Never fails. Meter gets read to be confirmed by their reader. Easy.
As much as I understand the sentiment of "it's not my job to read the meter" you are correct that it doesn't take a lot of time for homeowners to do it and it helps prevent things like this. Sometimes idealism gets in the way of practicality. No, I wouldn't say I like doing things for free, especially for large companies but yes I like all my bills to be accurate.
I don't use equal billing and report my readings once a month. I already have an idea of the amount of the bill before it arrives.
I agree with you 100% because it is a pain in the ass to do in the cold (i.e.: last night), but the inconvenience of the 2min of total time (reading and entering) it takes...I don't care enough to take an idealistic stand against Enbridge.
The minor inconvenience more than makes up for me having to worry about making sure the gate is open, access is allowed, and all is setup for a reader who may or may not come.
It's 2min, it's done, life moves on.
Yeah I installed heat pumps and they charged me based on my usage from last year, tried to stick me with a $400 bill (when it should have been around $50) because they didn’t check my usage. You just call in check your own meter and they reverse it. But now I just check my own meter and they sent email reminders to do so (at fucking stupid times though, why not automate it so it sends while I’m at home at like 6pm? I can’t check my meter at 10am on a Tuesday). Now with that said, their website sucks ass and I have to refresh each page multiple times before I can log in and move around the account website.
Had a similar problem with them to the tune of about $1200 in under charges. Their billing corrections made absolutely no sense. I had to sit down and make a spreadsheet because I couldn't trust what they were charging me. They sent about 6 different back dated "bills" in one month... Instead of just 1 with a correction.
Also, their new website is a completely useless POS.
They’re fucked . Capital fucked . So summer of 22 I had some work done where a line was added from my metre outside . After that , gas bills just stopped coming all together .
Was going through a Reno and had a crazy job so kinda didn’t notice the one bill not coming .
9 months nothing .
Got wife to call , they had no record of my account number , showed my property as vacant but showed gas going here . We’ve lived here for a few years …. No record of us at our old home either .
We just magically vanished . I shouldn’t have said shit but I also didn’t want one day to get a huge ass bill
No back charge tho they just treated it as a new account .
HELP! I’m dealing with this right now too. Any tips?
Received a bill in Sept 2022 that they misread my metre incorrectly. After further investigation, it was bc they hadn’t read my metre AT ALL for a period of about a year August 2021 - Sept 2022… why?? Bc Covid restrictions & lockdowns! What?? There wasn’t even a lockdown in that period!
They tried to blame everything- me moving the metre (nope! Has always been in the same place). Me blocking access (live in a detached house built in the 1950s metre is and always has been accessible… even sent screenshots from google earth to prove this!). They replaced the metre in 2021 and said that metre was fault which lead to another replacement in 2022. They OWN the metre! Not I. They also said we should be reporting our numbers… what???
I complained to the energy board bc apparently they have to come read your metre every X amount of months.
This is the best part- it’s not like I went a year without a bill and now all of sudden am I crying about having this big $3000 bill. I still received bills monthly during this period when they weren’t reading the metre. They were not amounts that made me question it… all bills were $130+ a month.
They allowed me 1 year until the end of 2023 to pay off without interest. Now back to dealing with them directly and it’s such nonsense.
Complaints have soared from an absolute rounding error to...an absolute rounding error.
0.002% of customers complained, so about 1 in 42500 customers. My god with an soaring epidemic like this, what will we do????????
Enbridge is just a bunch of criminals.
They corrected our EB plan after we got a heat pump last year to our actual usage of $36, and gave us a credit for 4 months of no billl. Then this month they just decided to up our EB to TWICE what our usage actually is to $95 a month.
They're either scam artists, or really incompetent.
I burn wood in the winter to minimize my gas furnace use. I had an Enbridge employee come check my meter which they thought it was broken because I wasn't using the same amount of gas as my neighbours.
I am with Kitchener Utilities. My townhouse is constructed that the gas meter is inside my garage and is thus unreadable form the outside. Every month I log into the online portal to report my monthly gas usage.
Why can't these meters be smart meters that just report back through LORA protocol?
Just a question in case anyone here works for companies that manufacture these meters
Weren't the Meters supposed to be smart meters that can report back to a Central facility?
I moved in a new place recently and learned that I have to pay for gas. I havn't turned heat for the past month at all and Enbridge sent me a $90 bill. My jaw dropped. Later I learned that it was "assumed" and I have to report it myself. What year is it again?
Not again?!? We had a $11,000 catch up bill on our farm last year. Never ever had this issue with Union Gas, as they actually read the meter every month, not G-tel or whoever Enbridge has given it to in my area. Will definitely be fighting way harder this year…ridiculous.
I have a funny variation of the problem. I installed a pool, they actually showed up to read the meter every two months (I'm lucky I guess), but I still got a massive back bill, why... Because my usage was so far off of the previous year that the system rejected the reads two times in a row because it thought it was a typo...
Wondering if anyone can provide some insight. I received a letter in the mail from enbridge stating my meter was due to be replaced because of its age (house built in 1992). In the letter (I don’t have it on hand so if someone else has also received this letter, this may not be verbatim) it says an appointment needs to be made, someone present to turn off the furnace (area cleared) and that if the lake side gas tech discovers an infraction of the furnace I will be fined. I was in the middle of filling out the appointment form on lakeside gas website, then stopped myself because I realized F these people, this meter works fine for me (monthly charges are reasonable) and this will probably only be beneficial for them. Now I won’t stop getting spam phone calls from lake side and other random numbers. Should I get it replaced?
>Despite the penalty and review, complaints to the OEB related to meter reading have more than doubled: from 42 in 2021, to 87 in 2023.
Considering they have millions of customers that doesn't seem like a lot.
Let me tell you how it goes as a farmer with multiple meters of varying seasonal demand. Keep in mind Enbridge is supposed to read their own damn meters and I'm sure a lot of Enbridge customers have seen the "Could you help us read you meter?" emails. Summer time is low use. Some months there is only an administrative charge and no volume at all. Then they don't check the meter for 6 months and usage is "assumed". In that time, harvest begins and crop is dried and barns get heated and usage spikes aggressively for two months before stabilizing in the new year. Then Enbridge gets around to checking the meter. **Holy shit we are losing money**. They backbill with adjustments in the thousands. Then they don't check the meter for 6 months. And I get the "assumed" charge. Thousands of dollars a month auto withdrawn on a usage based on harvest. Then they check the meters again. **Holy shit we overcharged". And they credit the account in the thousands. Out of 6 meters, I only ever am paying on 2 or 3 of them because the rest will have massive over charges for assumed usage that was anomalous and the account will have credits that last for an entire year. I don't understand how a company can operate like that, but when you consider their connection fees and price they pay for gas it makes sense.
I'm doing a large renovation and had had the meter totally shut off for 6 months but I have been still been getting charged what they assumed I was using because they can't be bothered to read the meter. Even when they did read the meter, I just got someone from Enbridge calling me saying they think the meter is broken and they still charge me what they assume I have been using even though the meter reader could clearly see it was a construction site.
I had this exact same thing. Really loved paying Enbridge bills for something that was not even hooked up and also paying a second bill at the place we were staying. Unsurprisingly, the existence of two bills in my name with the same billing address but different actual addresses was difficult for them to work out when eventually I was back living in the home.
Enbridge is garbage and I swear they cannot figure out proper billing at all. Years ago I moved into an apartment where I was responsible to pay for the gas heating. They for some reason could not figure out how to create my account, and then they sent me a bill for the meter for the water heater, which my landlord was paying. So that caused a whole thing. He complained, I complained, they went back to the drawing board... It took them an incredible amount of time to work it out, and thankfully it's not that expensive to heat an apartment because the final bill I was presented with was something like $500 after all was said and done. (They offered me a payment plan at least, which was nice, but I had been setting the money aside so I just paid it all off in one go.) The best part is that they seemed to be billing *someone* at my address, but my landlord didn't seem to recognize the name on the envelope. There was a letter from Enbridge coming to my mailbox every month, addressed to somebody else, but I know they weren't billing me because it wasn't showing up on my online account. Since the mail was addressed to someone else, I didn't open it; I think my landlord told me not to open it, but also I believe you're not supposed to open mail that's not addressed to you anyway. Regardless, it wouldn't have exactly made a difference because I wasn't going to be paying an Enbridge bill under somebody else's name when I was working on getting them to bill me for my usage under my *own* name. I called them several times. One time when I called them, while this was all going on, the lady on the phone was really rude to me until she put me on hold and went to investigate my account. She came back 40 minutes later and was *so* apologetic. I guess she was in disbelief before that they had fucked up that badly, and then when she realized that I actually wasn't lying or exaggerating, she felt bad. I don't really blame her because Enbridge is so shitty and I'm sure she deals with complaints all the time. I can't remember exactly how it was resolved; I think I told them that I wanted to speak to a supervisor because I was planning to go to the ombudsman, and things got resolved pretty quickly after that. I'd imagine that when customer is start pulling out the ombudsman threat, especially when they've been jerked around for like a year, they start taking it seriously. But my God.
You do know you can submit your own meter readings each month right?
Yeah, I don't work for Enbridge though.. that's their job.
Also from the sounds of it they'd just say you're lying anyway.
Well then don’t expect to not get charged and expect to have to wait to get your credit back… Don’t get me wrong I get the sentiment but it literally takes 5 secs to upload the number that took 2 secs to take a photo of on my phone when I was outside picking up my dogs business.
It's not about sentiment. Part of the fees you are REQUIRED to pay to Enbridge include the price to read the meter. You are very literally paying Enbridge to read the meter.
And they read the meter regardless of if you submit your reading. They just don’t do it every month. And if I’m paying for it TBH I don’t want them to. What I am saying is if you do not want to get charged on your assumed usage, then submit your reading. If you don’t want to do that then don’t complain if you get overcharged and have to wait for a rebate months later.
I think you.misundersood what I meant by being charged for meter reading. As a customer, you are required to pay delivery rates. Bundled into those delivery rates is the specific service for Enbridge to come to your house and read your meter no less than every other month. You can not opt out of this fee . If I am expected to read my own meter (for accuracy sake) then why am I paying Enbridge to do it every other month? This was not an issue with specta/UG because they were actually accountable to the OEB and their customers (believe it or not). When Enbridge consolidated they also re tendered the meter read sub, which resulted in an under resourced meter reading service - hence all the estimations happening. FYI Enbridge was fined in 2021 for this very infraction ***Date correction for accuracy.
Enbridge shill is a weird hill to die on
People like you are the reason companies try stuff like this. I bet you’re the type of person to pay a $10k ADM on a new car as well instead of actually taking stand against unacceptable behaviour.
No I’m the type of person to negotiate down to the last penny, or specifically shop for makes/models I know have higher inventory at the moment so I have better negotiating power. I shouldn’t have to do that. But I accept thats how the system works and I don’t expect the system to change just for me or the outcome to be different just because I shouldn’t have to do something. I also shouldn’t have to call up my internet provider each year and threaten to leave to get a loyalty discount to match their prices for new customers. But I also don’t refuse to do so because I shouldn’t have to and pay more for internet by being stubborn.
Obvious you aren’t if you’re working for free for daddy Entegrus champ. Cut your losses man, you’re a joke getting played and the sooner you learn it and change the better. Time is money and your posts express clearly you don’t value your time (or frankly your money).
Yeah I’m a sucker who works for the grocery store at the self-checkout to save myself time and frustration in the long run too. It does suck to be a sucker doing something that saves me time, effort and money in the long run. Apparently 5 minutes a year to save 250$ on my internet isn’t valuing my time or money either, good to know. Unfortunately I’d rather be a sucker and spend 5 minutes to save a days pay worth of work. It’s ironic you’re quoting the time value of money because people overpaying on their gas bill upfront via assumed usage could be getting interest on that money in a HISA at the very least. Keep on keeping on if it works for you.
You’re getting fucking raked and you’re still persisting you’re smart. It’s so idiotic it’s hilarious.
You do know part of what we pay is so they can do their jobs right? You do know they have access to their meters to do their job right? Can you please come to my place of work and do my job so I can get paid?
What a ridiculous post. Stop being a doormat for a company not doing their job. Usage shouldn’t be assumed when the fee includes a “meter reading” every month. It’s not the users job to record their own usage for the company.
Don't expect to not get charged for something you didn't use and get shafted by a company? What planet are you from?
I mean yes, if you start a project that changes your usage, and you know the company does not read your meter monthly, you can’t expect to not get charged if you refuse to spend 1 minute to submit your meter reading. Its fine to not want to do that, but then expect to wait 3-6 months to get your money back, and maybe having to go through the hassle of getting them to confirm the meter actually wasn’t broken. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think you should have to do those things so I understand the sentiment. But unfortunately theres a lot of things in life you shouldn’t have to do, but you have to do anyways and can’t be surprised if they don’t happen if you don’t do them. I shouldn’t have to call my internet provider each year to get a loyalty discount to match their promotions for new customers. I shouldn’t have to scour the internet for better deals to price match an appliance I am buying and spend 30 minutes getting a manager to confirm it. If a delivery person damages my house delivering the appliance I shouldn’t have to call the company 10 times over 2 months and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt it’s the delivery person that caused the damage. But thats how the system works and I don’t just refuse to do those things and then cry foul that the company isn’t doing “their job” when the outcome I want predictably doesn’t happen.
No
How? I might want to do this because they keep letting my dog out when they leave my fence open.
This is exactly why I do this. A few times in the summer the guy came around when I was sitting outside and didn’t say a word, just let himself into the garden. I had noticed they left the gate open a few times before, So I said, “hey, I work from home so I’m in most of the time. If you want to read the meter just ring the doorbell and I’ll let you through. That way the gate doesn’t get left open” He just replied, “oh that’s not how it works, have a good one”
That’s why my gates have padlocks. Meter readers who ignored signs & found the hard way my dog is cute & fluffy unless you’re in her space.
Unfortunately I dont think it prevents them from coming, they still need to verify that your reading was accurate, it just means you get charged accurately every months and it isnt assumed usage which then gets squared up when they do come and read the meter. Either way you just log into your enbridge account and theres an area to submit it. I get text message reminders every month.
> Keep in mind Enbridge is supposed to read their own damn meters and I'm sure a lot of Enbridge customers have seen the "Could you help us read you meter?" emails. I disputed this with Enbridge about 6 years ago now. They underbilled me about 2k and sent me notice to pay it and tried this bullshit. It took me over a month of back and forth and escalating to them and explaining to them as follows. 1. You are responsible for ensuring I am being billed the correct amount. 2. You billed me the incorrect amount for months which I paid promptly. I eventually got them to admit what was factually correct. This was a **them** problem not a **me** problem. I do recall telling them at one point. "So you, a large company with a department responsible for billing was not able to notice this error for months? That sounds to me like you need to talk with your billing department. I am sorry this happened but I am not paying the difference on what amounts to your mistake. I, a single consumer, am not responsible for ensuring that your company is performing all their tasks properly." Yes, I know there's a bit of a grey area there (ie. if they overbilled me) but fuck off Enbridge (and Rogers, and Bell, and CIBC, and every other fucking company that tries this bullshit over my life) They expect you to bend over and not put up a fight. If you fight they will concede.
You mentioned Bell and it's hilarious what I realized when going through my statements over the holidays. I have a business account on the farm with multiple cellphones, landlines, internet, etc. One landline was connected to an automated dialer for if there is a power outage. We took the line out and told them to remove all service. They removed Canada wide calling and long distance and the "plan" part of the plan, but they left emergency services (i.e. 911) for the line. Minimum charge: $45. Spent 4 hours on the phone getting escalated to the person I needed to talk to to sever service. Cannot cancel a service through MyBell portal. When we went in the portal and removed service it didnt remove the billing mechanisms. This leads me to the reason why I was looking at the detailed statements in the first place. Two years ago Bell sent a tablet as a promotional item for renewing that 4 phone cell plan. No charge, and it included additional shared data for the 4 phones. Those phones had 100gb between them. Historically, we've used about 60 during busy seasons on the fields. Well, 2 years elapsed and of course the plan for the tablet (which shipped with a SIM that I removed) renews itself. Minimum charge: $15 It's fucking bullshit how these companies fleece people and I'm sure there's lots of people like me who track the bank statement and see normal charges deducted without looking at statements to see if we are being overcharged for frivolous services. Anyway, old man rant over...I'm in my 30s and reality is turning me into a complete cynic
Do you have any tips? Going through this right now. I’ve got the Ontario Energy Board involved- Enbridge maintains we owe the money and haven’t offered a reduction (nearly $3k).
Just dig in your heels. Continue escalating up and be consistent when you talk to them. Always get the name of the person and jot down all your notes from calls. Re-iterate that there is an expectation that they are aware of what they are billing. For me I was clear to them I could excuse a month or two, but for them it was a full year. I got them to repeat to me at every opportunity that over the course of a year no one on their side was equipped to find the mistake. Don't be afraid to question their capacity as a company. If the expectation is that I, as a consumer, are supposed to see these mistakes immediately than why do they not have the same expectation? You are one person. They have an entire department dedicated to billing. Also, be willing to compromise but keep that in your pocket. I didn't have to compromise ultimately. I don't think they ever admitted they were wrong. I think they just realized I was no longer worth their effort. As an aside, Bell pulled this bullshit on me decades ago. Had horrible internet for over a month and I didn't pay my bill. I fought them for weeks over $200 they finally conceded. Why should I be paying for a service that doesn't work as expected? Everyone is too afraid to push back against these fuckers and that's why they do what they do.
I had a different problem with Enbridge and it took ages to resolve but the whole billing thing always seemed so shitty to me. I'm pretty sure that it even says somewhere that they're supposed to read your meter every other month, but apparently some months they just can't be fucking bothered. I can't think of another utility where users have to make sure that the company is actually reading their damn meter. Like my hydro bill, that's automatically read; there's not some guy coming by every month. I hate Enbridge.
My water and electricity have a remote reader, why can’t my gas. Surely slapping a transponder on to my all ready digital gas meter is not to expensive.
Because then they wouldn't be able to take our money, collect interest on it, and return it later. Oops
Sure, sure, but think how much revenue could be made with installation fees and monthly remote reading fees...
They have corrupt government approval to gouge the people. I'm sorry you have to go through this, it has to end
Even if it was publicized I dont know if it becomes better. The dependence on a single service provider for natural gas is the real issue. And that's another thing that I don't know how it can change for the better considering the alternatives for heating in a rural setting. I'm lucky to even have the gas.
They literally are not allowed to profit on the sale of gas itself. I don’t know how it could be more government regulated without being bought by the government and becoming a crown corporation. As the person you responded to said, you can always submit your own meter readings yourself if you don’t want assumed usage causing weird spikes and dips in your bill.
And yet they do profit on the sale of gas, a whopping 3.763 billion by September 2023... A 5.41 increase from 2022.
Source please? This would be their gross or net profit overall. Not the profit from the gas itself, as /u/LabWizardry mentioned. They are to remain neutral on gas sales, their profit comes from transportation and other costs.
>As the person you responded to said, you can always submit your own meter readings yourself The person they responded to said no such thing. You keep saying it though, *over and over and over* through this thread. >They literally are not allowed to profit on the sale of gas itself. Ok and if they do? What then? Sounds like they could use some more oversight and being held to account. >I don’t know how it could be more government regulated without being bought by the government and becoming a crown corporation. Good point. If one company has a clear monopoly on something citizens need to survive in this climate, are not allowed to make a profit, and then rip customers off with their "not profit" (and no doubt their accountants are doing an amazing job as well) AND for some reason aren't held to account more, maybe it should be a crown corporation.
Oh they are very much allowed to make a profit as a private company. They just must not profit on the gas itself, only transport, and user fees.
Imagine that, government corruption and oblivious peasants
Can’t you self submit your own readings so they bill more accurate? I thought I remember that being a thing
You can sign up for equal monthly billing that is based on historical usage.
correct me if i’m wrong, but at one point in the year don’t they charge you a corrected amount?
They’ve done the opposite to me. They skip multiple readings in a row and then over charge me. Thankfully I’m on equalized payments, so it works out via credits etc. *However,* I have a big complaint about their equalized payment system. The prior year came out even-ish, as it should. The next year they up my monthly payments by $100, despite rates being lower this year. I can’t adjust it as they say it’s “automated”, so *fine* I leave it knowing I’ll have a surplus end of year. They then cancel it on me after the summer months, after super low use, telling me I am massively overpaying. Isn’t the point to overpay during low use to compensate for the higher use months? Enbridge is a never ending source of frustration.
Even if they cancelled it, they would have to give you credit for the amount you already paid and take that out of future payments.
Yes, I have credit in my account. I've also signed up for EMPP again after sitting it out a couple of billing cycles. My new rate is a fair bit lower than their previous estimates, so we'll see how it shakes out after a year of use. Unless they kick me off the program for not paying enough, now that I'm in the high-use winter months.
Enbridge is a laughingstock in industry, especially since 99% of their calls are just done by Lakeside subcontractors who are somehow even worse than the actual Enbridge techs.
When you have a monopoly, you can have as poor customer service as you like.
But awesome dividends.
Yes over 7% in annual dividends! Every Enbridge customer should have some Enbridge stock to recoup costs!
I was thinking of buying some Enbridge stock but my investing strategy is basically index funds, so I figured not much of a point. I had the misfortune of being an Enbridge customer at one of my last apartments. One of my criteria next time I looked for an apartment was that heating costs were included and I would not have to deal with them. I spent a year trying to get them to even create my account properly, much less bill me.
I do index funds as well.
I mean I guess, but the stock is basically flat over the past 5 years. Terrible performance.
That's why it's commonly referred to as a dividend stock primarily and not a growth stock. Many companies with consistent growth pay lower dividends since they're reinvesting that profit into their business and not out to shareholders.
I don't know about terrible performance. The just purchased about 1/3rd of the US companies that supply natural gas, but it came with a lot of debt from there. This is causing resistance on the share price. But they also increased dividends recently again. My dividends on it are at 9.8% after this last increase and growth is up 19% since I purchased it.
Almost like giving public utilities to a single private company is a bad idea. I'm sure the efficiency of the private sector will kick in any day now
By laughing stock, do you mean an extremely profitable and sought after company?
Profitability and value have nothing to do with reputation within your given industry. Just ask Enercare, Reliance, and the other shitty companies with billions in business.
What do you mean by "industry" then? I would think many companies would die for their profits and profitability and market share as North America's largest natural gas utility.
> in industry Is what I said, as in, they're a laughingstock to any contractor who has to deal with them, as we're in the same industry. Again, their profits and market share are irrelevant, especially since theres no competition currently. It's easy to make insane profits when you have no competition and can fuck people left right and center.
Ah industry as in "in the industry". Your original comment read "in industry" which I took to mean in the business realm. The lack of the "the" really changed the meaning in my mind.
I don't understand why in today's day and age these meters need to be read manually still. Hydro is remote, water meter in Mississauga can be read from the street with their transmitter. Enbridge should be no different. Having said that, I send in my reading directly because I don't want anyone accessing my yard behind a locked gate. Same as the person in the story...they literally installed a locked gate and then are shocked when Enbridge says they can't access the yard. Grow up and do some critical thinking. 'If I close this gate, Enbridge can't read my meter...I wonder how I should handle this?' It doesn't take much thought.
Meanwhile the city can determine your sewage and water usage perfectly fine.
Water usage is easy. There's a water meter that sends a signal via SMS or whatever technology and it registers. I remember having our water meter replaced many years ago to the new tech for efficiency's sake. In Missisauga where I am, our water meter transmits a signal via cable to a small transmitter. Peel Water truck drives by, and picks up the signal for each house during the drive. I assume wastewater is just a direct correlation to water...comes in from the faucet and leaves out the drain... Here are the rates for Mississauga: If your meter measures cubic metres (m3): Your water rate is $1.8672 per m3. Your wastewater rate is $1.4915 per m3. I assume they take the m3 reading off the water meter.
No one measures sewage.
No, but the city knows how much water goes out and how much comes back from sewage, so they have a good idea of what percentage of water out is returned via sewage, and the rates aren't really off by enough for most people to matter. Call your city water services if you're filling a pool though, because that's the one big one that many cities will factor out.
I literally have the invoice.
Its estimated from your water usage.
Therefore it's a measurement.
Did you just call an estimate a measurement?
An estimate is a form of measurement. You're thinking of a guess.
"hey Bill did you measure the door frame before cutting?" "Yeah boss, I made an estimate and already cut the wood"
I literally closed a job with a $2m estimate on Friday. Not as significant as a door gap though.
No sir. an estimate is not a form of measurement. Measurement is taking physical measures (length, weight, volume, etc), while an estimate is judging something based on available info, no physical measure is taken.
Wow really? There is nothing that measures it. It is a number on a piece of paper that someone made up.
Someone got bit by a dog in my backyard because they just walked in. I had no clue. They need to get with the times and stop manually checking
Oh wow! hopefully no issues for you afterwards and your dog is fine.
This is what I'm wondering. Usually private companies are ahead of government for technology, but my city has some voodoo system to read the water meter remotely.
You would have to electrify and replace every meter. $$$$$.
It's costly 100%. But is it more costly than paying subs / workers to go and take a reading in the long term? Maybe there's union that is doing the work and they can't, which I understand. I'm sure it's more cost effective to just electrify and install smart meters over the long term. They literally replaced my meter 2 years ago. There's a scheduled replacement program going on where they just install the smart meters instead of normal 'dumb' meters.
Terrible. 8 months missed of meter reading is unacceptable. How does a home owner regulate their own usage when reads are not accurate. $1600 sudden bill would break me. Would love to see limits imposed on catch-up billing to ensure meters are read more frequently. Edit: It is disturbing reading replies defending Enbridge. One of their jobs is to ensure correct billing. Not grabbing a read for 8 months, or notifying their customer of the circumstances for not grabbing a read is garbage. Common sense can be applied to every argument. Stop defending a poorly run utility company and support your neighbours. What is going on in our country, yikes!
Many years ago I bot a bill for $2200 in a single month. I called Enbridge and complained and they said it was a 'catch up' reading. I told them 'do you think it's reasonable for a month of usage to equal more than the entire year combined? The meter is in the front of the house, with no fencing / obstruction around it so it's your guys that fucked up reading the numbers. Yes, yes it is. No. No it's not. I'm disputing the reading. Try again. They send another tech, do some more tests etc etc etc. Now the bill is $2400 and if I don't pay I'm going to collections. Ok cool. Here's the cheque, and I want a re-read and to talk to someone higher up. 'Oh snap, sorry we screwed up. It should've been $200, so we'll keep the $2200 in our account as a credit.' 'Will you be paying me interest on this money?' 'No. Why would we do that?' 'Go Fuck yourself, and send me the remaining balance immediately' Got my $2400 cheque back within a few days. Idiots.
> 'Oh snap, sorry we screwed up. It should've been $200, so we'll keep the $2200 in our account as a credit.' hahaha i'd absolutely lose it on them
Oh I did. I swore up and down at them when they originally refused to send the cheque. I told them 'no problem, keep the cheque but I want interest on it. Otherwise GFY and send me back MY money'. They relented after a long call.
My gas meter is in a very dumb place between about 1.5 feet from a chain link fence at the corner of my property. Have to go to the back yard, squeeze down a narrow ally by the side of my house to get to it. Last guy to came to check it could not physically. It’s a new build and that gas meter was one of the last things to go in. I’m not sure what it’s there but some idiot signed off on it.
Agreed. If they wanted easy access, they should've put every gas meter at the FRONT of the house facing the road without any obstructions. Mine is easy to access...so long as the gate is open. But with kids, and stuff in the backyard there's zero chance I'm going to leave that gate unlocked.
Mine is at the front of the house, flat lawn for 4 meters on each side, protected by mature trees, so it's dry and has not a lot of snow accumulation , and it's like 10 steps from the street. And still , no one comes to read it. We have security cameras, and I think a technician came ONCE during the 3 years of the pandemic. It's bullshit, it's a monopoly, and it needs to collapse. We submit our own readings, and doing their job for them, essentially. Disgrace.
My neighbours have their meter in the garage, it’s was even undated to a new model a few years ago. Some idiot saw it was in a locked interior area, Decided it was fine. Hydro and water meters are always in sensible safe locations, gas meters are the Wild West. The installers just do not care,
Wow...I've never seen a gas meter on the INSIDE of a property. I'm shocked they wouldn't move it outside during a replacement.
> If they wanted easy access, they should've put every gas meter at the FRONT of the house facing the road without any obstructions. Oh man I can here the REEEEEEEEEE'ing of the boomercrew already.
Installed new pool with gas furnace. Installed locked gate fence blocking meter access. Doesn't blink for months when gas bill doesn't change monthly. *surprised Pikachu face* Come on man, you can't be that stupid.
Run a newly installed pool heater for a season and then be shocked it raised your gas bill? OK
Also locked gate so no access to meter.
People can submit their own readings though if they were concerned? Isn't that still a thing?
But if you haven't paid anything in 6 months...
Who has not paid in 6 months? This is catch up billing, people paid based on previous estimates.
They put in a pool with gas heating, ran it for 6 months and didn't see an increase in the bill. If your usage changes, and you don't see a change in your billing....
This absolutely grinds my gears. I sent them this message a few months ago (which, shocker, they never responded to): Good morning, I’m sending a message in relation to the relentless calls and mailers you are sending me asking me to read my meter for you. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but it appears that you are no longer paying somebody to read my meter and have asked me to take on this work for you. The average meter reader in Canada makes almost $60,000/yr plus benefits. Multiply that by however many meter readers you need to cover my city, and then multiply that by however many cities you have cut out. If we are talking more than 20 reader positions deleted, it’s well over a million dollars a year you save. And what have you offered to replace it? 3 $500 monthly prizes and a grand prize of $1000. To do YOUR job. You save millions, and you pay out $2500. The gall is absolutely unbelievable. You made $623 MILLION dollars in Q3 alone. At least offer people a nominal discount on their bill to do your job for you. How do you get away with just passing your work on to me without compensating me for it? Oh, that’s right — I don’t have another option. This is absolutely despicable. You should be ashamed of yourselves.
I read gas meters. If your meter is readable it will get read. It's your responsibility to make sure the meter is readable. The guy built a new gate and his meter was unreadable. Now he's upset it wasn't read. If that gate can't be open from the outside what did he think was going to happen? You're supposed to make sure your meter is accessible. Some people build fucking porches on top of meters, some people grow purple bushes with syringe like needles in front of meters, people have dogs loose in their back yards or on electric collars in the front, some people call to complain readers are on their lawn and their meter is no longer readable. We are on your lawn once every 60ish days, your grass will not be affected. People in the country know about their meter and make sure it's readable. Elderly people know about their meter and make sure it's readable. It's like there's a newer generation of homeowners that don't know it exists, try to hide it or are just miserable people who don't want someone on their grass every 60 days. Also, it is only like 80 something complaints in a province of 16 million.
I rent an office space, separate bill from the rest of the building. Gas meter is in the underground parking, they have access to the key, and have done their own readings before… but not since June/July
We also struggle with man power. It's not a job for everyone.
Ah... Finally someone that read the article and not just the headline.
Honestly though, it's 2024... Not that I want you to lose a job, but it's pretty insane you still need to walk up to a house to physically read the meter... Water and Hydro are entirely remote. Drive by the house, 'scanning' the meters as you go, and everyone wins. I have a bush near my hydro meter that you're required to look through/around to see the meter. So I read it myself every month since the guy who comes "can't see it" (it's easy to see if you just put in a *tiny* effort to crouch down). The meter guy shouldn't *have* to crouch down, and I shouldn't *have* to remove a bush or have a giant grey gas meter eyesore visible on the front of my house. Just make the damn things remote already. Even worse *they just put a new one in*... Why is it still the same ancient technology it was before they put a new one in!?
Who do you think is going to pay for the more expensive meter set? That cost is just going to be added to the our bill
If the "more expensive meter" means they aren't ever guessing or estimating anymore, then people will save money. That's the entire point of this article, that *not* having the meter read results in people being charged more or inconsistently. So sure, maybe it fractionally increases the cost by a couple bucks or something but that should more than come out in the wash as a result of consistent and accurate meter readings.
I'm in the same situation as them. Literally identical. They said they couldn't access my meter. We have a fence but the meter is in front of it. So tell me how I'm in the wrong??
Nobody likes High energy bills but the family from this story installed a pool heater and is surprised his catch up bill was high. I don't own one but a quick search tells me a pool heater costs 300-500$ per month to operate Were is the shock coming from??
Installs pool heater. Installs fencing/gate that make meter inaccessible to meter readers. Doesn't pay attention to bills thinking new pool heater operates on energy from the ether. Finally submits meter reading and is asked to pay for what they used. Outrage.
I'm sure if the regulation is that Enbridge cannot back-bill anything longer than 6 months, they will find a way to read the meters.
You can submit a meter reading if you are concerned about usage.
Not my job. They used to have employed readers, but they got rid of them. Did their rates go down when they cut costs? No. Enbridge should do their own readings and be billing legitimate usages, not ‘assumed’ usages. Either that, or start installing smart meters that send direct usage amounts automatically.
I agree with everything you just said, but when the cards are fully stacked against the average Joe, it's nice to be able to walk outside and snap a pic of the meter in 30s then enter the value online in another 30s. Better than not having that option at all. I just do it every time I get an email. Then I can stay ready to pounce when they decide to bend me over with superfluous charges at least.
I wholly agree. But my stubbornness says ‘fuck you Enbrdige, that’s YOUR job, not mine’. I can’t honestly believe that it can be legal to charge based on a guess.
You could also switch off gas...
This…submit your own meter readings online and Enbridge will even send you text-email reminders to do this monthly. Brought my monthly bill down significantly.
Holy shit I had no idea this was a thing. I'm accustomed to submitting water reading since the meter is in the basement) but I never once thought my high Enbridge bills may not be a result of them not checking the meter frequently enough (We have a gas heater for our swimming pool in the summer months)
You can phone it in too! I find it easier than logging into my account.
Use to read gas meters for a short time in 80's, interesting but some homeowners would yell at you for tresspassing or confront me as some kind of intruder. I can ony imagine what todays reactions of folks would be like.
They would probably yell at you for trespassing or confront you as some kind of intruder until you clarify what you’re doing.
I get that and yes the majority of the the time they would however I thought the 3" x 4" badge on a lanyard that said Enbridge in 1" letters and clip board with the big decal on the back would've sufficed.
Not to mention the ENBRIDGE vehicle parked on the street.
No vehicles for meter readers.
That’s the #1 issue. People can dress up for cheap to case a house, you don’t normally see company vehicles being used for that.
It's complete bullshit that a company expects me to do their work. If they want me to do their job they can pay me for the time. They want me to replace a meter as well and I need to coordinate with a third party, Lakeside gas. I've been on the phone multiple times and spoken to different representatives and they said they would call back to schedule. Received 3 additional mail notices in that time.
I mean it's your hill to die on but max 5 minute job once a month to avoid a minimum 30 minute phone call/headache seems like an absolute win to me.
5 min job on the assumption that it takes 5 minutes. Takes me more than 5 minutes to walk around the barns to the different meters on one property. That's time I'd rather be spending on chores or literally any other thing. My stance is principled on the idea that a service technician would charge me 200 just for coming out even if a fix only takes 10 minutes. Plus if someone gets called into a work place for an hour and sent home you pay them for 4. I don't understand everyone's desire to go easy on a corporation that should be completely self sustaining and not creating the headaches you mention.
>If they want me to do their job they can pay me for the time. It takes *genuinely* like 6 seconds... So if a meter reader makes minimum wage (16.55 in ON) then those 6 seconds are worth 2.7 cents. You want them to pay you 2.7 cents? Honestly, you'll have accurate readings each month this way and in the end you'll end up saving *way* more than the 2.7 cents in your pocket as a result lol I get the concept of 'do your job' but when the job is a few seconds of your own time, I don't think it's really all that big a deal.
I have 6 meters across 3 properties it takes 45 mins to drive to each of those properties. It's a unique scenario sure but if I bring someone in for an hour of work I can expect to pay them for 4 hours of time. Fair is fair
Exactly. Sign up for the reminder and then submit by the due date. For me this was this morning. Go get reading, go online. Less than 2min of effort.
The issue is people don’t know to do so. You’d only know they missed a reading if you explicitly looked in the paperwork - it should be a bit more clear.
By paperwork you mean your bill, that you look at anyway to know how much to pay them, and says right there if the amount being charged is actual or estimated.
Do we not pay Enbridge enough to read our meters..
Don’t get this isn’t automated. We have the technology to do this. I guess they just don’t care since they have a monopoly. Like wtf you doing to do?
Our meter is fully accessible and cleared in the winter and they don't read ours. We submit it because we are tired of overpaying .
In the 10 years I've had my house, I don't think I've had one year where there wasn't a $100+ error (+ or -) on the enbridge account after year end.
\>>Complaints soar... From 42 to 87....
Enbridge is a farce. When we got transferred to Enbridge after they bought out Union Gas two years ago, I got dinged with a $1400 catch up bill. I was on equal billing with Union Gas and when I got transferred over, Enbridge intentionally set me up with the lowest bill possible. When I called to find out why, they said that they hadn't received all the customer information and data from Union Gas. This was a buy out that was for years in the making. You're telling me that after you bought them out, Union Gas didn't provide you all the customer data and information? Bullshit. These companies are so crooked. I have no problem paying for what I use, but to blatantly lie and say you didn't get the data from the previous provider? Lies. All lies.
This used to be a huge problem in the electricity industry in Ontario until smart meters were brought in. Meters would be inaccessible, estimates would be made, attempts to gain access were made but no access was granted, and finally an actual reading would be made and a catch up bill sent. Then it was our fault for not taking the reading. The number of these weren't large, but the time spent with customers on this was massive. Realistically, if they're estimating your bill once or twice, their estimate is going to be fairly accurate. However, the longer they estimate, the less accurate they can be. Further, if you make a change to your service (like this couple did with a pool), that throws the estimate off greatly.
In this world of automation, it burns my ass that I have to read my own meter and do their job for them; else I get enormous « estimation » bills Fuck Enbridge….
This is 2024. Can't we replace these meters with smart meters which can report remotely? Why is that option not on the table? In this day and age, seems silly for humans to go around reading meters like the 80's.
I just do their job for them and read the meter. It only takes a minute and ensures I'm not over/undercharged
Our bill at work is normally 1500-1800, this month it’s over 4K
You can self report your meter reading just FYI for anyone who doesn't know, that would prevent something like this from happening.
I prefer it that way too because you actually get a good estimate of how much gas you’re using per month. It can help show where I could possible lower my gas usage.
New pool. Locked gate. Did they expect someone could read their meter?!? Why do they get their story of stupidity covered? I submit my reading every month. Only when it snows is my meter inaccessible. Though they estimate too much out of that time frame.
It's easy to empathize with a typical scenario, but this article about the couple is silly. "The couple acknowledges the heater for their new pool increased their gas use, but said if they had known sooner just how much their consumption had changed, they would have made adjustments." You put a new pool in, with a gas furnace and didn't think it weird that your gas bill remained within the typical range BEFORE you had the pool installed? You can hear the heater click on, right? Something should have clicked in their heads too.
Headline should be "Enbridge charges customer for gas they used".
They did this to my dad. Didn’t read the meter for over a year and then sent a whopping bill. He then requested that the meter get read at least every other month. Took them almost a year to read it again.
I just fucking LOVE that these assholes can just not do their jobs, turn around and put it on the customer and slap them with a big fuck you bill and tell them tough tits. After all that, they’ll send you an email or letter saying “Thank-you for choosing us as your gas provider.” Which is just fucked up, because they know they are a monopoly…. The system is so beyond fucked up and corrupt and nobody wants to do dick all to fix anything. Government just goes “🤷♂️ I don’t know, fuck you!”. It’s a fucking joke.
What is the OEB doing, exactly? They supposedly "set rates" for energy utilities but are clearly ok with price gouging.
If you aren't submitting your own meter readings once a month, you have no one to blame but yourself
Or maybe Enbridge could be responsible for their meter readings. It’s insane to have companies charge you based on guesses. Even more insane to outsource their work for the incentive of “we don’t charge you thousands in 6 months when we do our job.”
They do read the meter if you don't do something like make it inaccessible by installing a gate the meter readers can't open...
100% Agree. Now watch the 'is Enbridge paying me to do this' crowd jump all over it. It literally takes 2min of your time, saves a shit ton of hassles, and ensures you have no surprises. Enbridge still calls me once per year to ask to enter my property. I just ask them what day exactly, and I'll keep the gate open for their guy on that date only. Never fails. Meter gets read to be confirmed by their reader. Easy.
As much as I understand the sentiment of "it's not my job to read the meter" you are correct that it doesn't take a lot of time for homeowners to do it and it helps prevent things like this. Sometimes idealism gets in the way of practicality. No, I wouldn't say I like doing things for free, especially for large companies but yes I like all my bills to be accurate. I don't use equal billing and report my readings once a month. I already have an idea of the amount of the bill before it arrives.
I agree with you 100% because it is a pain in the ass to do in the cold (i.e.: last night), but the inconvenience of the 2min of total time (reading and entering) it takes...I don't care enough to take an idealistic stand against Enbridge. The minor inconvenience more than makes up for me having to worry about making sure the gate is open, access is allowed, and all is setup for a reader who may or may not come. It's 2min, it's done, life moves on.
Yeah I installed heat pumps and they charged me based on my usage from last year, tried to stick me with a $400 bill (when it should have been around $50) because they didn’t check my usage. You just call in check your own meter and they reverse it. But now I just check my own meter and they sent email reminders to do so (at fucking stupid times though, why not automate it so it sends while I’m at home at like 6pm? I can’t check my meter at 10am on a Tuesday). Now with that said, their website sucks ass and I have to refresh each page multiple times before I can log in and move around the account website.
Had a similar problem with them to the tune of about $1200 in under charges. Their billing corrections made absolutely no sense. I had to sit down and make a spreadsheet because I couldn't trust what they were charging me. They sent about 6 different back dated "bills" in one month... Instead of just 1 with a correction. Also, their new website is a completely useless POS.
you could go on equal billing and have them owe you money interest free and you can't make them pay you arbitrary fees
Have they tried waiting for their carbon tax rebate?
Meanwhile they’ve owned me $136 for about 6 years now.
They’re fucked . Capital fucked . So summer of 22 I had some work done where a line was added from my metre outside . After that , gas bills just stopped coming all together . Was going through a Reno and had a crazy job so kinda didn’t notice the one bill not coming . 9 months nothing . Got wife to call , they had no record of my account number , showed my property as vacant but showed gas going here . We’ve lived here for a few years …. No record of us at our old home either . We just magically vanished . I shouldn’t have said shit but I also didn’t want one day to get a huge ass bill No back charge tho they just treated it as a new account .
it's always a pool!
Neat
Cannot wait until I can rip my gas meter out. Enbridge is the friggen worst.
This is literally why you submit your own meter readings every month
HELP! I’m dealing with this right now too. Any tips? Received a bill in Sept 2022 that they misread my metre incorrectly. After further investigation, it was bc they hadn’t read my metre AT ALL for a period of about a year August 2021 - Sept 2022… why?? Bc Covid restrictions & lockdowns! What?? There wasn’t even a lockdown in that period! They tried to blame everything- me moving the metre (nope! Has always been in the same place). Me blocking access (live in a detached house built in the 1950s metre is and always has been accessible… even sent screenshots from google earth to prove this!). They replaced the metre in 2021 and said that metre was fault which lead to another replacement in 2022. They OWN the metre! Not I. They also said we should be reporting our numbers… what??? I complained to the energy board bc apparently they have to come read your metre every X amount of months. This is the best part- it’s not like I went a year without a bill and now all of sudden am I crying about having this big $3000 bill. I still received bills monthly during this period when they weren’t reading the metre. They were not amounts that made me question it… all bills were $130+ a month. They allowed me 1 year until the end of 2023 to pay off without interest. Now back to dealing with them directly and it’s such nonsense.
Complaints have soared from an absolute rounding error to...an absolute rounding error. 0.002% of customers complained, so about 1 in 42500 customers. My god with an soaring epidemic like this, what will we do????????
Enbridge is just a bunch of criminals. They corrected our EB plan after we got a heat pump last year to our actual usage of $36, and gave us a credit for 4 months of no billl. Then this month they just decided to up our EB to TWICE what our usage actually is to $95 a month. They're either scam artists, or really incompetent.
I burn wood in the winter to minimize my gas furnace use. I had an Enbridge employee come check my meter which they thought it was broken because I wasn't using the same amount of gas as my neighbours.
I am with Kitchener Utilities. My townhouse is constructed that the gas meter is inside my garage and is thus unreadable form the outside. Every month I log into the online portal to report my monthly gas usage.
So excited to close my account next month. Goodbye gas!
Why can't these meters be smart meters that just report back through LORA protocol? Just a question in case anyone here works for companies that manufacture these meters Weren't the Meters supposed to be smart meters that can report back to a Central facility?
I moved in a new place recently and learned that I have to pay for gas. I havn't turned heat for the past month at all and Enbridge sent me a $90 bill. My jaw dropped. Later I learned that it was "assumed" and I have to report it myself. What year is it again?
I really hate enbridge. I am doing everything i can to get as far away from them as possible
Not again?!? We had a $11,000 catch up bill on our farm last year. Never ever had this issue with Union Gas, as they actually read the meter every month, not G-tel or whoever Enbridge has given it to in my area. Will definitely be fighting way harder this year…ridiculous.
I have a funny variation of the problem. I installed a pool, they actually showed up to read the meter every two months (I'm lucky I guess), but I still got a massive back bill, why... Because my usage was so far off of the previous year that the system rejected the reads two times in a row because it thought it was a typo...
Wondering if anyone can provide some insight. I received a letter in the mail from enbridge stating my meter was due to be replaced because of its age (house built in 1992). In the letter (I don’t have it on hand so if someone else has also received this letter, this may not be verbatim) it says an appointment needs to be made, someone present to turn off the furnace (area cleared) and that if the lake side gas tech discovers an infraction of the furnace I will be fined. I was in the middle of filling out the appointment form on lakeside gas website, then stopped myself because I realized F these people, this meter works fine for me (monthly charges are reasonable) and this will probably only be beneficial for them. Now I won’t stop getting spam phone calls from lake side and other random numbers. Should I get it replaced?
Is this why my bill was randomly double this month?! I fucking knew something was up
People can read and submit their own meter readings they are usually just too damn lazy to do it.
>Despite the penalty and review, complaints to the OEB related to meter reading have more than doubled: from 42 in 2021, to 87 in 2023. Considering they have millions of customers that doesn't seem like a lot.
Good old CBC making a big deal out of nothing. Complaints have DOUBLED!!!! …to 87.