<p>I got an email this morning from the realtor who helped us buy our house. Apparently our sellers got in touch with him some time ago because they either didn’t stop auto pay when they canceled their gas, or didn’t cancel their gas, or something somehow went screwy with the gas and they got charged $80 for and think we owe them. Unbeknownst to me, BF tried to send them a check but apparently it had the wrong address on it, so he stopped payment and wrote a new check with the correct address which they say they have not received and has not been cashed. Now they are angry and are saying we are lying about the whole thing and have no intention of sending them the money.</p>
<p>Well, now that I am aware of the situation I don’t think we SHOULD be sending them any money. It seems to me this is their battle with the gas company and it has nothing to do with us, other than that we might owe the gas company more than we thought we did. This whole thing seems very fishy and I am very uncomfortable. It’s only $80 but I really don’t like this and I don’t know how to fix it. Do I need a lawyer? BF is telling me that for some reason the gas company can’t refund them and they can’t transfer accounts but he is so bad with this kind of stuff I don’t know if that’s true or if he just thinks it’s true. I don’t think the gas company will talk to me because I’m not on the account. I wish I had known about this from the beginning because I don’t know if we can now tell them we refuse to send a check if BF already said he would, I don’t want to enrage them and then have something bad happen.</p>
<p>I am not against paying the $80 if we didn’t pay for our own gas, but it seems to me the seller should be getting a refund from the gas company, not from us, and that we should be paying the gas company, not them. This whole thing makes me so uncomfortable.</p>
<p>Sounds to me like the battle is really between the gas company and the previous owners as you’ve said. They have the responsibility to terminate the auto-pay…especially considering there’s no way anyone else…especially you could do so for them. </p>
<p>If they didn’t terminate the auto-pay in a timely manner, then IMO…the onus is on them and they shouldn’t be getting you involved. However, the law may not necessarily agree. </p>
<p>I’d start by checking with the relevant housing/utilities contracts to see if they mention anything related to responsibility if auto-pay isn’t stopped in a timely manner.</p>
<p>I am still confused about how exactly this even happened, I am not getting a clear explanation from BF. He is in over his head. I think part of the problem is that he has a freeze on his social security number because of past identity theft, and when the gas company couldn’t verify his identity our gas account was put under the name “Current Occupant.” We moved in October and the gas didn’t get changed to BF’s name until probably sometime this month because he somehow wasn’t aware there was a problem. I am guessing the original owners got charged from oct 20-oct 31 and then realized their mistake and canceled their auto pay and thats why we’ve been getting the bills since then. I think it transferred to current occupant in November and we started getting paper bills in November.</p>
<p>I totally agree that they should not have had to pay that money, but it doesn’t seem like it’s my responsibility to fix this. This was not my mistake and now they are apparently angry and think BF was lying about the first check having the wrong address and the second check apparently not arriving. Our realtor kindly gave me seller’s email address and said he thinks it’s best if we handle this directly, so he is backing out. I feel like I should not be contacting this person. I don’t know what to do.</p>
<p>You may want to notify the gas company about this discrepancy and ask the previous owners to take it up with them. Also, ask your BF for the full details before you do this as you need to have all your bases covered before you proceed with the calls. </p>
<p>Don’t do any more than that…especially considering this issue is between them and shouldn’t have involved you.</p>
<p>BF has sent two checks. I can always send a third but I don’t want them to come back next month, with no documentation as is the case this time, and insist they got charged for something else.</p>
<p>You don’t need a lawyer for an $80 issue - a lawyer would cost way more than that.</p>
<p>It should be very easy for you to determine when the gas account switched to your name. This is something you should have done at the time you moved in along with contacting the water company, cable company (if applicable), etc. If you don’t have the old bills around or online to check just call the gas company billing office and ask them what date it was switched to your name. That’ll tell you whether or not you were using gas on your dime or on the previous owner’s dime. If you didn’t contact them to switch it to your name in a timely manner then you (or BF) messed up.</p>
<p>Not only should you have contacted the gas company upon moving in but the previous owner should have contacted them and the other utility companies upon moving out and cancelled their service. If they didn’t contact them and cancel in a timely manner then they messed up.</p>
<p>The previous owner shouldn’t be contacting you and if I were you I wouldn’t send any money to that person, especially since there’s no contract between the two of you for this, you don’t really know whether the $80 is even valid, and it sounds as if you don’t know the actual date when it switched. You didn’t buy any gas from them and they didn’t provide any gas to you - you get your gas from the gas company.</p>
<p>When you talk with the gas billing department explain the situation, confirm your start date, and if that start date is off, for example maybe 3 weeks after your real move-in date, ask them how they normally handle issues like this. This isn’t the first time they’ve handled start date issues. Don’t just send the previous owner $80 though since you have no idea if it’s even valid.</p>
<p>I’m interested to see how this plays out. We recently sold our house, and knew it was our responsibility to cancel our utilities. It would not occur to me to go after the buyer for my own mistake, I’d be calling the gas company.</p>
<p>Tell the previous owners to take it up with the gas company. Tell the realtor that he/she ought to know better. And tell your BF to stop sending them money!</p>
<p>And you don’t need to tell the gas company anything. It’s not your account - it’s the previous owners’ - and the gas company can’t discuss it with you.</p>
<p>How hard is it to get a record of the gas bills and match that up to your payments to the gas company? This is one of the more trivial issues I have seen discussed here.</p>
<p>Honestly, looking at the thread title one would think you closed on your house, took ownership, and somehow the sellers did not receive your $200,000 mortgage proceeds.</p>
<p>To me the issue isn’t that I’m not willing to pay the money, I want to pay the money if I owe it and I DID confirm that they were billed when they shouldn’t have been, I just want to pay it to who I owe it to-- and I think that’s the gas company. What if I send them a check, they cash it, and THEN they dispute this with the gas company? Then I have to pay it twice. WHY would they come to me all angry and not go to the gas company? This just doesn’t seem right to me.</p>
<p>NJres, I’m a 23 year old and this is a scary situation. If you think my problems are trivial you’re welcome to go away. I asked my own parents for advice and they didn’t know what to tell me.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Who should bear the responsibility for this error? The sellers. It was their responsibility to terminate automatic payment of the gas bill. They didn’t, or so it appears. Their error. The loss should be theirs.</p></li>
<li><p>Do you really want to die on this hill? I would not rush to pay them $80 (unless their initial request had been polite and somewhat apologetic, in which case I might have agreed right away). The worst thing that could happen to you, I think, is that they could take you to small claims court. They should lose there–you never asked them to send $80 to the gas company or anywhere else, and you never received $80 from them–but it will probably cost you and them an entire day of work to go to court.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I think you’re well within your rights to deny their request. The decent thing probably is to find out from the gas company whether $80 in automatic payments had been credited to your account since you became the owners of the house. If it has been, you can send them $80, along with a letter stating clearly that you recognize no obligation on your part to compensate them for their own banking error (on this or any other occasion), but you are nevertheless sending the $80 they have requested through the agent who handled the sale. Or not. I think it really is up to you.</p>
<p>If I were in your situation, I would probably pay them $80 before I would spend a day in small claims court. On the other hand, if I were in their position, I also wouldn’t go to small claims court over $80. I would just say nasty things about you behind your back. Which, I believe, is what you’re supposed to do about the other parties (known as “the people”) in any real estate transaction anyway.</p>
<p>^^^Trust your instincts. Call the gas company and don’t write any more checks to the sellers. I wouldn’t even speak to them or answer or write any emails to them. The scenario you describe above could certainly happen, so just don’t deal with them anymore.</p>
<p>I agree that this issue is between the prior owners and any/all utility companies and/or their realtor. You do NOT owe them anything. I would not pay them anything and tell them to take up their grips with the utlility companies and/or their realtor. You & your BF do NOT owe them anything.</p>
<p>I don’t think I’d use that realtor again. Why didn’t realtor tell sellers to talk to gas company? He didn’t give them your email address, did he? (Sellers obviously know your mailing address). I agree with other posters: You’ve done nothing wrong. Don’t send money. Let them deal with gas company.</p>
<p>Agree - don’t use that realtor again. They shouldn’t have handled it this way. The realtor doesn’t seem to know what he/she is doing in this regard.</p>
<p>Look at it another way - the previous owner clearly didn’t handle the gas account properly so they’re obviously not competent in this area which is all the more reason not to trust what they say.</p>
<p>Other possibilities -
It could be that the gas company messed up. They might have received notice to terminate the account of the previous owner but not processed it properly. such that the auto-payment still happened.
(a real possibility here) The previous owner might not have gone into their own bank account and stopped the auto-payment to the gas company. We already know the owner isn’t too swift in handling things like this.</p>
<p>It also sometimes takes a some time for things like this to get reconciled between the utility and the auto-payments by the bank, especially if the previous owner didn’t terminate things properly, which they didn’t, and it’s possible they’ll end up getting a credit check from the gas company at some point in which case they’d have both your money and that credit. Do you really think these people would return your money if that were to happen?</p>
<p>Ema - I think it’s fine for you to ask a question like this on CC. Most of us know you’re still starting out and may not have run into weird issues like this. Also, if you don’t mind the suggestion, you and your BF need to discuss how you’ll handle bills, make sure you communicate with each other on the subject, and are in sync on it. You also need to make sure whoever pays the bills is responsible enough to do it properly since both of you may be responsible even if one or the other messes up. Handling money properly, or not, can be a big factor in a relationship.</p>
<p>Another vote for telling them to talk to the gas company. This is a problem with their contract with the gas company, not with you. You can deal with the gas company as well, to pay the $80 if it is fact due.</p>
<p>If this was an error on the part of the seller, they might learn a necessary lesson - terminate your contract properly!</p>
<p>If it was an error on the part of the gas company, it is still an issue of their contract with the seller, not with you.</p>
<p>When contacting the seller, you should inform them that they need to deal with the gas company, and that you wish no more communication regarding this issue, and ask them to stop contacting you by email. If they continue to contact you, it is harassment.</p>
<p>If the realtor gave them your email address, I would report this to his supervisor. It’s not like the sellers don’t know your address - they used to life there! Unless you voluntarily supplied it, they have no right to know your email address (nor do they have a right to your phone number, if it is an unlisted number. That a realtor would share these is truly unprofessional.</p>