Today Valerie called me during a meeting and when I answered she made it clear that I needed to take this call right away. When I got into the hallway, she said that there were people at our house saying that they were going to cut off our gas. I started thinking, “I’m sure I paid the bill”, “We haven’t received any notices”, etc . . . My assistant, Moni, started talking to the guy on the phone and he was sure that we needed our gas cut off and that he had the right house. In the mean time, I found several of my bills and confirmed that I had paid for the past 3 months and that the bill said nothing about a late payment. Although I didn’t understand everything Moni was saying, I could tell that she was being pretty forceful that we had paid our bill and that we shouldn’t have our gas cut off. The guy told her that if he didn’t do this today, that they would come tomorrow and totally disconnect our house from the gas company (which is a really big deal, evidently). We asked if there was anywhere in Budapest that we could go and pay the bill. He said that all the offices close at 3pm. Conveniently for this guy, it was 4:15pm. No luck. In the end, he had to cut off our gas. It is our heat for our house and our hot water.
After the phone call, I found a bill from April that I hadn’t paid. Then, I found a notice of disconnection dated in late May that said that they would disconnect in 10 days if I didn’t pay. I couldn’t read the notice and I’m sure I must have taken it to the office for translation, but in the busy-ness of getting ready to leave for the summer, I guess I forgot. The crazy thing is that none of our bills since then even mentioned the outstanding bill. After calling the company on the phone, we found out that we do owe from the late payment and that they don’t put late payments on the bill since I’m on balanced billing.
The next step is that I go to the Gas Company in the morning and pay the bill. Then, I FAX the payment notice to the company and they have 48 hours to cut the gas back on.
Please pray that it would be quick and that it won’t get too cold over the next few days.
This is clearly the STUPID AMERICAN TAX. We couldn’t read the notice. It is likely that we received phone calls which we couldn’t understand.
Bummer dude. Sorry to hear that. Sounds like a good time to call in some favors and use someone else’s shower!
So if this gas problem is a stupid American tax….. I think that the fact that I went to a friend’s to take a shower only to come home and figure out that our one bathroom’s water is heated with ELECTRICITY and I could have stayed home just makes me a stupid AMerican!! HA!
That is hilarious!!! Who would have known??!!! I am glad to know that at least you can have a hot shower. Praying that it gets restored quickly and that the house doesn’t get too cold. Love you guys!!