insideyournwa.com

If you are a resident of Bentonville you can guarantee that the electricity will go out 2-3 times a year. Already in 2008 we have had 4-5 instances and some of them last for hours at a time. Regular readers of ours know that I often rant about the monopoly enjoyed by utility companies and today will be no different. I am justified in my rant considering that there is the capacity to allow citizens to choose who they get there electricity from. The city of Bentonville has conveniently decided that if you live in Bentonville you will not be allowed to use any other electric company than there very own.

When I purchased my home a few years back it had an address of Bentonville, but was outside of city limits. To this day in fact we live in Benton County not Bentonville. This meant that Carrol Electric serviced our electricity needs and we were not subject to the constant nuisance of resetting all of our clocks and being late for work. Now I was just as upset that I couldn’t pick then as I am now, but at least my power was consistent.

After living there for a year the City of Bentonville sent me a letter proclaiming how happy they were that they would now be servicing our electricity and sorry for the inconvenience but your electricity will be out to change the box at our convenience not yours. No big deal I guess other than I have to be without electricity and I get no say in when and I believe that the City of Bentonville is actually a little bit lower on their price. Looking back I would have rather paid a little more to not have to worry about my food spoiling because they can’t keep us on.

When it was all said and done all electricity is the same right? My lights still came on, my computer still came on, my stove and refrigerator worked fine on City of Bentonville power over Carrol Electric. That is until my power went out. It stayed out for hours. Finally I went to the City of Bentonville to ask why I had no power only to find out I hadn’t paid my bill.

I had never received a bill from them - the last one I got was my final bill from Carrol Electric. When I told the clerk that they told me they sent a bill and a final notice then shut us off. They then told me the address they sent it to which wasn’t my address. Aha I thought easy misunderstanding they can fix it and we are done.

The City of Bentonville argued with me that they had the right address not I so it was my fault. After some arguing they admitted that all of the bills were sent back because of a bad address and waived the fees but “they can’t do it again if I don’t pay”. Thank you City of Bentonville for helping me out when I was so clearly trying to scam you out of fees. The result of the argument got them to change my billing address to the correct address according to 911, USPS, UPS, FedEx, etc. but they would not change the address of the account.

That is where it gets interesting because the next week I received a letter informing me that my address was changed by the City of Bentonville and that they would notify the appropriate people. The problem is they didn’t only fail to tell the above mentioned people, but they didn’t even change the billing address on my account so I still didn’t receive bills from them. Knowing that they couldn’t waive fees for my blatant incompetence in the future I went in and set up auto payment so let’s hope they can do better than SBC with the auto pay.

Thanks again City of Bentonville - I write this as I am on battery back up thanks to your complete disdain for your customer.