Finally received my electric bill after 5 months of not getting one. The bill for $438. had the following note with it:

IMPORTANT CUSTOMER NOTICE

The enclosed bill is for more than one month's energy usage. This is due to a problem with our new computer billing system. We are EXTREMELY SORRY that this has occurred and hope you are not impacted by this delay in billing.

If you require ADDITIONAL TIME TO PAY the amount due, please give us a call at 371-7171 (metro Phoenix area) or 1-800-253-9405 (other areas). We assure you that this incident WILL IN NO WAY IMPACT YOUR CREDIT RATING. You also have our commitment that LATE FEES WILL NOT BE ASSESSED on your account due to this bill.

You are a valued customer and we appreciate your business. We sincerely apologize for any frustration and inconvenience this delay may have caused you.

APS

That was it. I did all caps where they underlined, but what do you think? How many thousands of people received one of these over the past few months? I have read here where ComEd is all screwed up in the Chicago area? This may be the norm for billing systems throughout this year and next. Watch your bills!

-- Bill (y2khippo@yahoo.com), March 06, 1999

Answers

Went down to my local John Deere shop to pay for the repairs on my tractor. Didn't wait for them to mail it and needed to be there for other things. Bill is normally printed by computer.

Harried secretary with stack of hand written bills. Searches for mine and I pay for it. Computer is off.......Hmmmmm.

LM No I didn't ask.

-- LM (latemarch@usa.net), March 06, 1999.

I'm pretty sure that more than one utility is using billing software from Anderson Consulting. This is the software "upgrade" that is screwing up ComEd. What other utilities will Anderson foist this package on? ("oh yeah, its fully tested and debugged...")

Of course, I'm just speculating, I have no idea if your utility uses the same (or similar) Anderson software.

While I'm pissing about Anderson, has anyone seen their new splashy print ads?

There's a cowboy driving a team of 2 or 4 horses, they've got a rope tied around them and its hitched to the EARTH. the cowboy and horses are in outer space.

What does this mean?

"We're going to pull the earth out of orbit and we've hired a cowboy and 2 horses to do it!"

"We're going to use 19th century technology to solve your problems!"

"The laws of Physics do not apply to us"

------------- remove the NOT to reply via email

-- isetta (isettaNOT@earthlink.net), March 06, 1999.

Seems a lot of billing systems have gone on the fritz since New Years. But the "expert pollys" tell us there is no such thing as the Jo Anne Effect.

So, I guess that State Farm has switched Y2K-compliant telepathy to send out monthly billing statements, 'cause there hasn't been one in my mailbox since December. All I hear from our local agent is that "Nobody's getting their bill from the regional accounting center.". I don't know about anyone else, I go to the agent's office and pay in- person to avoid the possibility of a huge, multi-month bill.

It's strange that their electronic information system has all the up- to-date billing data, but there's no bills being churned out and mailed. I wonder how this will finally be cleared-up and explained.

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), March 06, 1999.

I don't think anyone is claiming that JAE does not exist. The issue is how pervasive it is, and how correctible it is. That is, whether it will escape from IT to the outside world, and if so, what the effects might be.

But clearly there's a lot of code being stirred up out there. Remediated code put back into production without proper testing. Upgrades to new packages not properly configured and installed. Genuine y2k bugs striking lookahead routines. Confusion because version control systems can't accommodate the efforts (new features being added to one version while another is being remediated, etc.)

Expect to see a whole lot of just this sort of snafu for several years to come, I think.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), March 06, 1999.

I mentioned this in a thread a few days ago, but it's appropriate here, so I'll mention it again. A very close relative of mine owns a small manufacturing facility in Wake County, NC. In January, irrepairable y2k problems crashed their accounting systems. They went manual and then purchased and installed a new system. I don't think it was a severe disruption. (Note, the manufacturing end has no high-tech to speak of, just air compressors, etc.) Here's the kicker. The relative is still a total DGI when it comes to potential for infrastructure failure.

-- Puddintame (dit@dot.com), March 06, 1999.

I am also on APS service in the Phoenix Metro area, I have been receiving my bills every months. How is that explained?

-- lulu (lulu010101@aol.com), March 06, 1999.