Roommate doesn’t want to pay equal utilities because “she’s never there”. Advice please. via /r/roommateproblems


Roommate doesn’t want to pay equal utilities because “she’s never there”. Advice please.

We live in a 3 bedroom 1.5 bath house. There are 3 people living here total, our utility bill last month which includes electricity, water, garbage, etc. was around $210 so about $70 per person. This month the electricity was $50 higher which still only made it around $80 per person. With our rent, gas, and internet on top of that we're only paying around $410 for everything each month for a decent sized house which isn't bad at all! Unless you're one of my roommates of course. Her argument is that she shouldn't have to pay as much for the electricity because she doesn't use the AC as much and is always gone on weekends, even though the lowest we set it to is 70 degrees and that is at night. Other than that it stays around 74 which is generous considering we live in Oklahoma and it has been in the 90's here for a while now. Of course, this sounds like a reasonable request in theory. Nobody wants to pay for something that they are not using. However anyone who understands how electricity works will realize that calculating the exact cost is much more complicated than that. For example, electricity rates are calculated by KW used per hour. We would have to monitor the AC unit by itself to tell how much power it is using at the times that it is running when we turn it to 70 in order to calculate an accurate amount. It got to the point where she told us "set it to 70 less often or I'll pay less than the required amount", the other roommate and I talked about it and decided we would just have her pay $10 less to stop her bitching. Then it continued to the point where she asked us how much power our computers use and how often we do laundry. She kept using other random people for reference stating that our bill was way too high compared to theirs. People that live in completely different cities where the rates are all lower, or in apartments that don't even have a washer and dryer. Two other major appliances that cause spikes in electric bills. We've had other conversations about this that would be way too long to type but she is still throwing a fit about it. I would like to know what others would do if they were in my position.

Submitted October 30, 2016 at 09:26AM by trust_logic
Click here for the original Reddit article

J.R. Randall

J.R. Randall is an economist who resides in the Bay Area. He focuses his interest on range of economic topics. He has interest in deep sea fishing and art.