What are vacant charges and why am I receiving them?

What are vacant charges?

When a lease is signed, there is generally a utility addendum explaining which utilities you are responsible to pay for, and how those utilities will be billed. For rental properties, one thing that landlords want to ensure is that utilities for their apartments are always activated. This means if there are no tenants occupying a unit, the utilities are still on and the landlord is paying for those charges. This way, if a potential tenant is interested in a unit, and they are shown the unit, the lights will work, the water will run, the heat or A/C will be working, and the resident can see that everything works. Conservice manages these vacant units, ensuring the bills are paid in a timely manner to the provider.

If a lease indicates that a certain utility service needs to be put in the resident's name, then it would be your responsibility to contact the appropriate provider before your lease start date to set up and activate an account with them. Any utility billed by Conservice will be added to your Conservice account, which is automatically set up for you (see "Creating or cancelling your Conservice account").

Why am I receiving them?

If the utility account that needs to be in your name is not set up by your lease start date, then Conservice will continue to receive and pay the bills for those utilities to ensure that they are not disconnected. Because we can see that there is an active account for a resident in our system, we take the utility charges that were billed and pass the charges to you as a vacant charge. There is generally a service fee that is added as well for the work of processing and paying the bill to the utility provider, and then auditing and adding the vacant charges to your account.

Here is an example: You moved into your new apartment on March 1st, 2021. When you moved in, you forgot to call the local electricity provider to set up an account with them in your name. After 6-8 weeks, you receive your first Conservice bill, and you see your normal water, sewer and trash charges. Along with that, there is a Vacant Electric charge as well as a Vacant Service Fee. You realize at that moment that you forgot to set up your electric account, so you call immediately and get that set up.

What can I do if I receive vacant charges?

The first thing you should do is described in the example above: ensure that you have an account with the appropriate provider for the vacant utility in question. 

If you don't have an account, then the vacant charges are valid and will need to be paid along with your other utility charges (see "Where and how to make your utility payments"). You will need to set up your account as soon as possible. Conservice will continue to bill you for vacant charges up to the point that the utilities were switched into your name.

If you do have an account and you think that the vacant charges were billed to you in error, please take the following steps to get the charges reviewed:

1. Produce a bill showing that you were billed for the same service period and address as what Conservice has billed you for. 
   1. If Conservice bills you for Vacant Electricity for services from 3/1/2021-3/31/2021, and your bill has a service period of 4/1/2021-4/30-2021, then there is no overlap. Conservice billed you for correct service periods and no credits are due.
   2. If you have a bill that overlaps with any or all of the dates that Conservice billed you for, send that to us via email or chat. We will then review that bill and determine if there is overlap.
2. If the services were delayed because of an issue with the utility provider (if you confirm with them that all of the above mentioned boxes were checked and given correctly by you), and that you did everything in your power to put the services in your name by your lease start date, then we can review your account to have the vacant service fee removed. In order to confirm this information, we have to conduct a conference call between you, the provider, and one of our utility experts. There we can ask questions to verify that you are not at fault, and then review your account further.
   1. If the services were not transferred to your name by your lease start date, and it was because of an error or delay by you as the resident (i.e. you forgot, you gave the wrong address, you did not complete your account by paying the deposit or providing adequate ID), then the vacant service fee cannot be waived.