I had already given my tirade about corporate bureaucracy in Part I. However, this time I put governmental red tape in the crosshairs for my next gripe, especially before anyone falsely assumes that I don’t believe that the government has its own nest of bureaucracy.

Moving into my new house, I was one of the first homeowners on my side of the block. In the immediate vicinity, there were a handful of houses still under construction and about a half dozen other lots that were just marked as sold which would take about six months or longer to build.

I was in a similar situation in my previous neighborhood. In fact, it took almost an entire year after I moved into my old house for all the houses on my block to be completed. And it seemed that I would be in the exact same situation with my new neighborhood except on a wider scale.

At my previous house, I had a neighbor who never signed up for garbage pickup. Being in a gated community, the city did not pick up our trash; therefore, the neighborhood association used a third-party contractor, BFI, to pick up the garbage twice a week. However, each homeowner had to individually sign up with BFI after they had moved in. My wife and I immediately contracted their services but my neighbor didn’t.

Instead, about once or twice a week, he would either walk across the street or around the corner (we lived on a corner lot) to one of the numerous dumpsters used by the builder to put his trash into. The amount of refuse that each house generates during construction was enormous so the neighborhood had plenty of these huge dumpsters sitting on vacant lots. And at least for an entire year, there really was no shortage of dumpsters.

This time with my new house, I figured I would do the same thing that my former neighbor did and save myself a small bundle of cash from not paying for a third party trash pick up service.
 

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And I also figured that it would be fairly easy to go at least an entire year without paying for it. However, I also figured that a year later after many of the nearby houses were finished being built, I would either have to walk quite a bit further up the street for the new section of the neighborhood that just opened or just give in and sign up for BFI. But for the time being, one year’s worth of savings would be fine.

After I got my first monthly electric bill, my wife noticed a garbage pick up fee attached to the cost of electricity. I was incensed. The city doesn’t even pick up my trash and the city-owned electric company didn’t even bother to verify whether or not I was living in a gated community. And since this utility company didn’t insert this charge into my bill the last time with my previous house, I was even more furious. My wife called them up, had them remove that fee, and asked them to never apply it to us again.

The next day, we got our water bill.

Again, my wife noticed that on the back of the bill was a charge for garbage collection for BFI. Again, the county owned Water Company simply assumed that we wanted a third party to pick up our trash and so they automatically enrolled us with BFI. Furthermore, we didn’t even get the adhesive tags that signified that we were customers; just the charge for it.

My wife called me up at work to ask what to do. She rightly deduced that there was no way that the city could charge us for a service that they never rendered. But she didn’t know exactly how to explain this to the Water Company especially if they asked us what we do with our trash if it is not being picked up.

I told her that she could tell them one of two things. First, it is none of their business what we do with our garbage and that we aren’t going to pay for it to be picked up. Or second, at the end of every day, my husband eats all of our trash therefore we don’t need it to be picked up. My wife opted for the former explanation.

I originally thought that I would be saving a little bit of cash for an entire year. Instead, I had both utilities charging me for something I didn’t want.

And I guess what added insult to injury to this situation is that both local governmental utilities didn’t even bother to ask if I needed the service since it was really an option. They simultaneously assumed I needed it and just charged me for it. That is part of the governmental red tape that I despise the most.

And I also wondered how many unobservant homeowners are out there paying for something that they didn’t request or even been given a service for. Many of my new neighbors didn’t know about this charge and they had to call up the Electric and Water Companies to get this fee removed. And quite honestly, if my wife didn’t look over the bill, then we would probably have ended up paying for it thinking that all this time we were saving a bundle.

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