SCREWED By Southwest Gas!

There have now been over half a dozen phone calls with SW GAS about their failure to shut off my gas this summer as requested, and billing me for the fact my water heater has still been heating water. I initiated the first ones. Lately the calls have been coming in from them. I'm not going to try to pick which call was about what exactly, but as a whole, here is the final story. Or you can consider the title the spoiler and move on. 

But where's the fun in that?

First, they have determined their failure to shut off the gas initially when requested is actually their recent policy. Blame covid.They start with a "soft shut off" at their office, where the gas still runs in whatever might still be on, like my water heater.  They just shift your bill to themselves during this time. Of course, the bill is only half the reason I shut off the gas while on a long vacation. (Try not to let your house explode while you're on vacation folks. I mean, by then who can afford another motel?)

Then they shift to a hard shut off some time later. In our case, I was told it had been done on July 8. Obviously it hadn't been done, but the paperwork for it had been sent through as a done deal.  Many questions later , looking at paperwork, "possibly" talking to the person responsible for the deed, suddenly a new story emerges. "They were told when they got to the house not to shut it off."

Seriously? By whom? No info on that, of course. It wasn't by me, the only person with a name on that account, 1800 miles away, give or take a few, on the day in question. It wasn't Steve, the other homeowner. It wasn't Rich. This leaves me with two possibilities,  if I choose to believe that story. Either our vandalizing nemesis who now is supposed to be sitting in a federal prison for arson, and who was practicing his "craft" in a variety of small ways inside the house while he was pretending to be Rich's friend, just happened to stop the shut off for his own nefarious reasons like wanting to burn our house down in addition to his parent's house, or the solar installation people were working on the roof that day, mistook the gas company employee for somebody doing an electrical shut off and thought they were doing a good thing. That latter presupposes the gas person didn't use a company truck or wear a company uniform, or the solar people were meddling idiots.

If I choose to believe the alleged story, and not that a lazy employee couldn't be bothered to do their job, it still was not coming from anybody authorized to stop the shutoff I ordered. On the phone at least, I have to identify myself three different ways before they will even talk to me about any details of my account and its history. So I'm really having a problem with an anonymous person claiming the authority to countermand my shut-off order. Something is very wrong with that. Think SW Gas will accept responsibility?

Let's also note that nobody notified me via email, their usual way of contact, that my gas was not in fact shut off, or that the meter was in fact still running because gas was in fact still being used against my  orders. It also does not explain why their system still insisted I needed it turned back on if they knew it hadn't been turned off. I never received a bill which would have alerted me to the issue, not until late August when I got one for two months of use. I was in transit and did not have time right then to call the gas company to figure out what had gone wrong.

Once I did, they had no answers yet but I was advised to pay the bills just to keep in their good graces, and try to get a later discount or refund for their error.

In the process of working to find out why I still had gas on, and why they insisted on coming to the house to turn the gas back on and inspect all our gas appliances, even though they by then realized they had not in fact shut any gas off, and were going through multiple contortions to find an excuse not to come out (which they were only finally motivated to do once I mentioned I still had covid and was contagious, not wanting any visitors inside the house) they still insisted on sending me the email on the previously scheduled return day stating they had been out and completed their turn-back-on task. A known lie of course, which stank of CYA aimed at whoever was looking over their shoulders.

The account had now been declared as being "continuously active" as their only way out of that visit. Thus the final chomp in the ass. And thus their final verdict that I was responsible for paying both months' worth of gas bills. But hey, they were doing me the favor of not charging for the month plus a couple days when the "soft shutoff" was in place.

I was too angry to do anything but hang up on the company stooge who told me that. Mother's training is still holding all these years later. She would have hated hearing everything I felt like saying. It would definitely not have been polite!

If I ever get in a position where I can afford to replace appliances, you can bet I'll be switching to all electric. At least I can flip the proper switches on the breaker box to shut down all but the solar controls, then put another padlock on the cover, the way we handle summer vacation electric use. Then I can also flip Southwest Gas...OFF!