I don’t want to pay my PG&E bill

A lit­tle over three months ago there was sup­pos­ed­ly a gas leak some­where in the neigh­bor­hood. A Pacif­ic Gas & Elec­tric tech­ni­cian came in to my apart­ment and turned the gas off, and then over the next cou­ple of weeks there were work­ers (not from PG&E) around the build­ing. At one point they tore a hole in my bed­room wall and left it there for days.

Even­tu­al­ly an inspec­tor came in and signed off that the sys­tem was safe­ly fixed. The work­ers came back and patched up the hole in my bed­room wall. And no one ever turned the gas back on in my apart­ment. I’ve con­firmed this by turn­ing the ther­mo­stat up to 90° when it’s 60° inside. Noth­ing happens.

I have since received three bills from PG&E. Not very large bills, but it seemed that it must be for more gas than I’ve used, unless it’s still leak­ing. A few weeks ago I angri­ly tweet­ed my dis­plea­sure with PG&E’s auto­mat­ed pay sys­tem (and in-per­son pay cen­ters) charg­ing $1.25 for the priv­i­lege of giv­ing them money.

Exam­in­ing my bill more close­ly, I now see that I’ve been accru­ing charges for the time my ser­vice has been shut off. For three months in a row now, I have been get­ting bills for a lit­tle over three dol­lars each month for «trans­porta­tion fees» which I assume is a fan­cy way of say­ing that I’m pay­ing for the priv­i­lege of hav­ing gas trans­port­ed to my location.

I sup­pose that I don’t mind the idea that I would pay a min­i­mum fee just for hav­ing ser­vice. How­ev­er, I’m dis­in­clined to pay them at all for ser­vice which PG&E dis­con­nect­ed and nev­er turned back on. If they want me to pay a flat min­i­mum fee for access to gas, I think that should be pred­i­cat­ed on whether I actu­al­ly have access to gas.

I grew up in New Eng­land, and I remem­ber more morn­ings where the tem­per­a­ture was below ‑20°F than I can count. I live in Cal­i­for­nia, where I can’t tell you the last time it dropped below fifty degrees here. I don’t have a gas stove, although I would pre­fer one. This one wall heater is the one pos­si­ble source of nat­ur­al gas I could use. Most of the time I keep the front door open. If I get cold, I close the door. If I get real­ly cold, I close the win­dows. If I get real­ly cold, I put a sweater on. It rarely ever gets cold­er than that, so I haven’t real­ly cared whether I have heat in my apartment.

The thing that will be real­ly fun­ny will be when they start threat­en­ing to dis­con­nect my gas. I look for­ward to call­ing them up to say, «hi, I received this notice that you’re going to shut off my gas if I don’t pay my gas bill. That won’t be pos­si­ble unless you turn it on first.»

Nev­er mind that threat­en­ing to cut off gas to some­one who has used zero therms in the last three months seems like a threat with­out much teeth.

My only real ques­tion is: do I have any oblig­a­tion to tell them that they haven’t recon­nect­ed my gas? Because hon­est­ly, I’m pret­ty sure I don’t want to pay even three dol­lars per month for some­thing I don’t use.