So Right About CL&P

So Right About CL&P

By Ursula B.G. Kilner, Salisbury

This year is the first time in living in the same house for 46 years that the power bill has come with mysterious estimated columns in the chart that shows our electricity usage. I called after four months of these estimates, while paying each month the $153 on the budgeted plan my husband signed up for many years back. I have never changed it, so this arrangement continues and I pay the extra amount owed in August—we always seem to owe extra at the end of the "electric year."

The first reason I was given for the estimates was that the meter-reader could not read the meter; the meter, I was told, was in a place where the meter-reader could not access it. This meter has been in the same place for over 70 years (long before my husband and I were here) and there has never before been any difficulty in reading the meter. As that excuse did not fly, I was told that CL&P is short-handed. "What, I asked, "about all the ads I see in the newspapers placed by people wanting work?" Well, I guess those fellows are not suitable—so we have estimated readings. Wouldn’t it be nice if other businesses or store owners could also send out a bloated billing whenever the till was a trifle short?

So now I am awaiting the next billing from CL&P and wondering which fiction writer they have making the whole thing up. It is interesting that when we moved here in 1955 and for some years after, our electric bill came every other month, and for those two months the bill was $60 or so. No doubt we now use more power—but that much more? One cannot help but wonder what else the power companies are doing to line their coffers besides trying to milk us of some advance payments on our bills. I guess we are not supposed to notice that our electric bills are going up and up!

Sunny MacMillan [Scamming the Public?, April 26] is absolutely right when she says that "big is not necessarily better."