Hick laid the bundle of mail on the table. It has been coming wrapped in a rubber band. Not that we get so much mail, but it's a way for the carrier to keep it sorted, magazines/circulars wrapped around the various-sized envelopes. It made me wonder how Hick saw an envelope from the city, but I once caught him in the car mirror stuffing an envelope in his back pocket, which turned out to be an insurance refund check! So nothing about Hick's relationship with the mail would surprise me.
Anyhoo... there was indeed a window envelope from the city, and the material inside looked like a check. I used my letter opener to slit the top. Unlike The Pony, who used to think that letter opener was designed to pry along the edge of the glued flap!
Inside, I found THREE checks! You know, just to complicate things even more.
The first check was for the Beauty Shop. It was a refund for $92.74, which should have been $125.00 if it was a full refund. I looked at the FINAL BILL we had gotten, showing $32.26 next to the DP designation, and the amounts added up. They had taken the final payment out of the deposit. I don't like that, but I guess it's a way of collecting money from deadbeats.
The next check was for $125.00 for the main house. That made sense. We had our full deposit back. Yet we had never received a FINAL BILL for this one. There still should have been about two weeks worth of service to account for at the time we had the closing and ownership transferred hands. But hey, it was benefitting us, so no need to complain, right?
The third check confused me even more. It was $6.08, for the main house, and marked as a REFUND OF OVERPAYMENT! The number sequence on this check was not consecutive with the other two refund checks. I have no idea how the city came up with the charges on the main house, because we never got a final bill!
I can only assume that somehow, when the buyer started service, he only did it on the main house. That's because the closing papers listed that as the address, since the properties weren't split, and the Beauty Shop faces another street, with a different address. Perhaps our final bill went to the buyer, who paid it and a couple days that overlapped, since Hick didn't disconnect on closing day, wanting to leave the water on for the buyer.
So mysterious, or so slipshod in the billing process of the city. We came out $6.08 ahead with the city. But we paid $43.88 for water/sewer/trash fees out of our closing settlement with the buyer. Money we had already paid with a check to the city.
I figure the buyer (who seemed like a decent guy) realized that, and maybe got our final bill at his address, or went to city hall to question it, and paid it. If so, then we both come out about even, or with us $6.08 ahead. OR ELSE, the abstract company had actually sent that amount from our closing money to the city, and the bill was double-paid.
Of course, I could be totally wrong...
We're calling this loose end tied! Now I have to sort out The Pony's part of it all, for our tax records.
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