I’ve been going through some pretty heavy personal stuff I don’t want to give away too much but it includes DV and stuff within that realm.
Majority of my utilities etc were in my ex husband’s name but I wasn’t listed on the accounts I was never really allowed to be involved in that stuff.
My ex recently was incarcerated due to what was stated above. I called all utility providers to explain my situation and to change things around. Water and electricity were super helpful but my natural gas provider was not. They wouldn’t let me close the account or open a new one in my name for the address without me contacting my abuser which was something that wasn’t an option anyway. Yesterday ATCO came to turn off my gas and put a lock on there due to no payment and the account holder not being contactable despite me calling many times to explain the situation.
I finally got someone on the phone yesterday who was slightly helpful. Now my issue is I have no gas to use my oven etc and I also have a child who now cannot have a warm shower in this current weather, I called ATCO today to check if the request had been put in place and was informed it was but I was told “if you don’t want to pay your bills having to wait 5 days for a warm shower is your punishment”
I found this to be really hurtful. They have clearly never lived through DV and had to deal with all the impacts of what that can do to a person. Admittedly I’m probably a bit naive and don’t fully understand how all of this works but I’ve been in a relationship for 13 years where I’ve never been in control of anything like this or allowed to. Is this standard practice for these places to treat people like this?
Has anyone ever had any luck getting them to hurry up reconnecting your services? I’m a little lost with what to do.
*edit to include that I sent through current orders put in place by the court, our marriage certificate as proof we were married and also proof of incarceration. My property manager also tried to help out by contacting them to let them know my ex had been removed from the lease agreement. Kleenheat has been extremely dismissive of all of this