Quote:
Originally Posted by JMBroad
Seems my post was deleted - not sure why but here goes again:
Sorry to hear about your daughter, I got mugged on a regular basis while at University in Lisbon and it's not a fun experience. Even got mugged once by a guy carrying a needle saying "give me your money or I'll inject you - I'm HIV positive". That was scarier than the guns and knives.
Back to the topic - comparing the two, irrespective of electricity for cooking, would you agree that the cost of three people using a lot more electricity in Brazil is only just higher than one person not using much electricity in Spain?
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Sorry if I wasn't clear on the robbery. It was my daughter's mother who was robbed at gunpoint, my ex-wife. She phoned me to tell my daughter, who was with me when she was robbed, not to call her cellular as it was robbed as well. At the police station they told her that it's possible that she, or myself, could receive phone calls saying that they've kidnapped my daughter and asking for ransom as this is apparently common.
I don't know how much the energy is in Spain. I know our habits here and I know that I pay a good bit more for my energy bill here in Brazil, and seem to use less, than I do in the U.S. Looking at one of my past energy bills, the total is 768 reais (or $480 U.S.), 255 reais of this amount are taxes, or right at 50% of the value of energy used. The thing that has dumbfounded me here concerning energy bills is that every single year that I've lived here my energy bills get smaller during this time of the year (June, July, August)......the "winter" here in Brazil. Yet we use the same appliances for the same amount of time. Our habits don't change simply because this is the "rainy" season and it gets a little cooler. In years past when my bill has nearly doubled during the summer months and I've called to complain they've said, "Well, it's summer, you must be using your A/C's." and then when I tell them that we use our A/C's year round and do the very same things on a day-to-day basis year round they don't have an explanation......they've came and switched out the meter, but same deal.
Unfortunately enforcement of the law doesn't hold a high priority here, I'm sure you can imagine the regulating bodies for specific areas, communications, energy, etc., don't carry much weight either. At the end of May of this year Anatel (Agência Nacional de Telecomunicações) restricted the cable and satellite tv companies for charging for "ponto extras", or additional outlets for the months of June and July of this year, well, I checked my bill last week and SKY has continued to charge me for my additional outlet both for June and already for July. I've already opened a formal complaint as SKY actually lied to me on the telephone saying that just last week Anatel approved them continuing to charge for additional outlets. I then called Anatel and they said they did no such thing. Another amazing thing is in all the years I've lived here, in all the bills I've received, there have been an alarming percentage of incorrect bills, and not once have I been undercharged. One would think that if these mistakes were honest that once in a while a mistake would be made in the customers favor! Now let's see how long it takes SKY to correct this "mistake" and how much time I have to devote to getting it corrected. I would venture to say that if Vegas put an "under/over" on the time for it to get corrected it would be 90 days.
