Northern Indiana Public Service Co NIPSCO NIPSCO abusing the disabled and the sick Merrillville Indiana

Today, Wednesday January 12, 2011, I answered my door to find a service man from NIPSCO here to disconnect my gas and electric service due to non-payment.&nbspI was never given any notice of disconnection, which is required by Indiana state law. &nbspThere is no proof they sent the letter other than their word.&nbspI informed him that I was never given any notice and he agreed to come back later after I had a chance to call NIPSCO Customer Service.&nbspBut this all had to be done before 3:30PM or the disconnect would proceed.

NIPSCO service reps claim that a notice was mailed on Dec 27, 2010 and a follow up phone call was made.&nbspThe rep also claimed NIPSCO is not responsible for mail NOT being delivered or lost.&nbspThe phone number on record has been wrong for 6 years and I have repeatedly contacted them about correcting it.&nbspSo how could I be called when I no longer have that number.

I fell behind due to an unexpected funeral expense and just cannot&nbspget the money together to catch up on my bills.&nbspI simply could not let my partners mother be left in a freezer until she could save all the money to pay for the funeral.

On top of that, my partner is a disabled, autistic person with cardiac and other respiratory problems as well as life threatening hepatitis C.Power outages are life threatening in any weather.&nbspThat is why we have a emergency generator which is natural gas powered.&nbspIt would not work since they were going to cut the gas AND electric service off.

Being left in a house without heat or electricity for an extended length of time that a disconnect would cause will result in another hospitalization.&nbspHaving to move suddenly without preparation can cause severe trauma to an autistic person.&nbspWhen the NIPSCO rep was informed of this, the attitude was "oh well, not my problem".&nbspActually, if we had the money to move or go to a motel, we would not have fallen behind on the NIPSCO bill.

My complaint about NIPSCO was the callous attitude but how they never sent the mandatory disconnect notice and could not contact me by phone because the phone numbers corrections kept getting lost.&nbspNIPSCO should be required to send disconnect notices by certified mail to prove that the notice was received.

Despite the chaos of the afternoon, we were miracled and the bill was paid just in time.