Thursday, June 13, 2013

Ohh joy, paying the bills!

Today I took care of our rent and utilities.

Rent is pretty easy...my agent gave me his bank account number so I can just put my bank card into the ATM and transfer our rent straight to his account. He then transfers it to the apartment owners agent who gets the money to the owners.

Utilities are just a pain to take care of. We have this lovely bank book to pay them.



So it tells you (from the far left) the date, what utility it was, how much was withdrawn, how much was deposited, and then the current balance. 

It took awhile to figure out how much we needed to put in each month and when. We didn't want the balance to run out but we had no idea when money was being taken out and what for. 

I finally sat down with our agent in December to go over it...AFTER our electricity was turned off because it wasn't paid (there wasn't enough money in our account) 

Basically we pay a gas bill and a management fee every month (which is about 800 RMB or $130) and then an electric bill every other month (which is usually 1600 RMB or $245) 

It really still makes no sense to me because if you look at the withdrawals there are random amounts here and there--i have started waiting to get the electric bill on off months just to see how much we actually owe. 

This would be so much easier if we could just pay our bills online...but because of the monitoring of internet sites here, nothing is really done online. 

Somehow I always feel like were being slightly ripped off! 

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