Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

We got a letter last week from the gas company, addressed to "Occupant," and the building number but no apartment number, and "N/A" for the account number. They have been unable to identify a "responsible party" for service to this address, and threatens to cut off service without further notice.

So, I used the "resident portal" to tell the management company about this. I just got an answer from our contact at the management company, asking if I have an account set up with National Grid, and saying this is necessary for our hot water. I wrote back, explaining that yes I have an account, and those bills have my name, the apartment number, and an account number, none of which is on this letter.

I patiently did not say "yes, I have an account, after an amazing amount of hassle when we moved in determining the meter number for our gas line." We have no intention of paying for the hot water (or heat) for the entire building. Heat and hot water are both included in our rent, both because there's one heater for all four apartments and the public areas of the building, and because there are state rules limiting when/how landlords can charge for water.

They management company sent me a gas meter number, but it's not at all clear that it's the right number:

I spent ten or fifteen minutes on the phone with National Grid, with a customer service rep who tried entering that number into their system, and then tried every variation she could think of. The number I was given is a B and then seven digits, and she tried entering just the digits, and she tried adding zeros at the beginning or end of the number, before telling me that none of it had worked. Neither did looking under the name of the management company. The customer service rep sent me back to building management, hoping that there was a typo in the number, or failing that, maybe they have a record of an old National Grid account for that apartment, or could figure out what incorrect street address our building is listed under. *sigh*

I sent that email around 1:30, formatted as a numbered list in the hope that it will be a comprehensible explanation of a ridiculous situation. I haven't gotten a reply yet, and at this point am hoping for Tuesday morning. I suspect the person at the building management company is swearing at National Grid's incompetence, or it's taking a while to find an answer to this stupid query, or both. I got the impression that National Grid just shrug and say "oh well" when they hit one of those incorrect listings, rather than correcting the listings so the system shows the actual location they're delivering gas to, or even adding a note in their system saying that, using her example, when someone looks up "55 Main Street" it should return the entries for "1 Main Street."

adrian_turtle said that she is going to take a look tomorrow and make sure nobody snuck an electric stove in when we weren't looking. That's incredibly unlikely, but this entire saga is unlikely, and she has to go over there tomorrow and put out flyers saying that we have reserved parking for the moving truck.

I think our next move may be to knock on our new neighbors' doors, or slip notes under the doors, saying something like "hi, we're your new downstairs neighbors. I know this is weird, but National Grid can't find us in their system. Do you know what address they think this building is at?" That's on the theory that since the utility can't find a listing for the building now, they probably couldn't find it last year or the year before either.