pepper

Hi guys, My first time here and I have a off the wall question for anyone that has run acrosse this before, I have a friend that had a meter stuck and would not turn at all,well it stayed this way for three or four years and his bill was like $16.50 every month, then one day the electric co. came out and put a new meter on and the bill went back to normal and no one said a thing to him about it at all.{no one}not a word. but that was twenty years ago, so the other day a man ask me why his bill was always the same I looked at his meter and it was not turning.not even with everything in the house on. My question here is , you think they will try to make him pay back pay after they figure it out or just replace the meter ? thanks in adv.

480sparky

Hmmmmmmmm.

"My first time here........" followed by ".........I have a friend....."

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All responses based on the 2008 National Rat Code.

ArrrrrMatey

Unless they could prove that he did something to disable the meter or he was growing weed in the house, they really have no recourse.

MDShunk

If the meter stuck or slowed down, they typically do nothing except change the meter. If the meter was fast for some reason, they will test it and give you a refund for however much it was fast (normally only back one year).

The real rough ones (I've been involved in three) are where the PoCo had on the wrong CT's and were underbilling a customer for years. It's simple math to find out what they're owed, and I've known of bills to go out in the 30,000 to 100,000 dollar range. They are only permitted, by law in my state, to go back something like 7 years to recollect what they underbilled.

I'm sure every PoCo has different guidelines on that, and laws naturally vary from state to state.

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-Marc, ABC, XYZ, PhD, 1-2-3

-Someday, I'll wear pajamas in the day time.

pepper

Yes, first time here , yes, frend is for real.
yes, question was ask by real person.

BCSparkyGirl

I had free cable for 2 years, my mom for 5. They don't come after you as far as I know, it's their equipment, therefore, their screw up.

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I can drink you pretty.......

nolabama

i dont know what the answer is to the OP's question. i dont think they will notice. Now if you drill a hole in the disk and drop a small rod in it thats another story. so is breaking the little tab thingy. My favorite of course was from a guy we called "right-right" - cut the 2"rigid in the attic and install a 2" GUAT, make a tap of the service feeder and run that to a small panel for your HVAC, water heater, and stove ........
that only works of course if you have a stem thru the attic and are a complete doouche and theif

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the more i learn the less i know

rewire

your cable is not free you are stealing it.

220/221

A) It aint cheating if you don't get caught.

B) If you aint cheatin, you aint playin hard enough.

If my elec meter was spinning too slowly I certainly wouldn't call it to their attention. Just keep a few bucks in the bank in case it catches up.

A friend of mine went 5 or 6 years with extremely low bills....like $20 a month. Eventually the maintenance schedule called for new meters in his neighborhoood and he had to start paying real bills.

rewire

you were subsidizing your friends "free" electric.

chenley

Had this happen to a client where the POCO new the meter was bad and billed a flat rate, until replacing the meter. When the took the reading that month, they tacked on the previous three months, minus the flat rate. They called me out there to fix it and basically told them that it's between the POCO and them, I'm not getting into the middle of that.

captkirk

I did a service change a year ago and after I finished I fot a call from the homeowner and he told me that his electric bill was 29 dollars. His meter wasnt working properly. It would only spin every so often. He called PSEG several times and they basically said that if it is spining then its working and they didnt need to do anything else. I asked the HO if he wanted to sell me his meter...LOL Some guys have all the luck.

william1978

The cable company came out and hooked up my Roadrunner and when the dude left I had HBO and a few other channels and to this day I still don't know if that guy took the HBO filter of or what.

BCSparkyGirl

I didn't steal it, it was like that when I moved in.The Girl who lived there before had called her friend at the TV provider, and she said it was a hot line that they "didn't " know about. And I had another neighbour who was a jerk, and called it in to report it, and they STILL did nothing about it. As for my mom, they just stopped sending her bills for about 5 years.

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I can drink you pretty.......

rewire

so you are OK with it being stolen and you getting the benefits of it being stlen as long as it was not you who actually was the one who originally stole it but you are recieving stolen property which makes you an accomplce to the theft, its your moral compass that must guide you.

BCSparkyGirl

I don't feel guilty, as it was reported numerous times, yet the TV company chose to do nothing about the situation.

And honestly, I do not feel bad about getting things for free from corporate companies. I feel bad about mom and pop organizations who get ripped by these guys. They can afford bonuses for their CEO's in the hundreds of thousands, even in these current times, then NO, I don't feel bad about getting some free cable for a couple of years.

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I can drink you pretty.......

rewire

Have you reported it? So stealing is OK as long as it is from a big corporation. How big does the company have to be? Would it be OK for someone to take $20.00 from your wallet if you had a thousand in the bank? We have raised a generation with no moral compass

egads

I think the free cable was a while ago. All the cable companies have gone digital. You get very little without a box now days.

Ray Cyr

Why are you calling this stealing? The providing company knew the line was hooked up. It actually costs the company nothing for the receiver to get the signal from their system. What costs is the maintenance of the system and the licensing of the programming. It is quite possible that the local office of the company choose not to send a technician out to disconnect the line because it would have cost more in labor and fuel to do so than to knowingly allow someone (pre-existing) access to the line.

rewire

I remember a story my Mom told me from her childhood it seems one morning the neighbors milk cow had gotten loose and wandered down to my Grandfathers house. Grandpa had just traded his cow to another neighbor which is a story for another day.Well no milk cow no milk so when my Mom saw the neigbors cow it was manna from heaven she ran to the barn for a pail and was soon proudly walking into the house with a pail of fresh milk. Well her joy was short lived as my Grandfather asked were she had come by the pail of fresh milk. Mom not being one to lie to Grandpa told him of the neigbors cow she had tied up outside and that she was going to return the cow after breakfast. Grandfather then asked if the neigbor had givin her permission to milk the cow of course Mom told hin no. Grandpa then told Mom to return the neigbors cow along with the pail of milk because they did not belong to them. So before breakfast Mom carried a pail of milk while leading a cow the almost two miles to the neigbors farm.

we have alowed to much grey into what should be very black and white.