A former resident's electric bill

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I had recently bought my own condo and I have my own account set up with the gas company and the electric company. However, I have been getting mail for the electric company for the former owner, who has passed away last year. I called his two sons to let them know that I keep getting his mail and that includes his electric bills. One of them thought that there was an electric bill, and he told me that he thought that his account had been closed off a long time ago. Well, I opened up the bill to get the phone number and noticed that the bill was passed due and would go into collections. So, I also called the electric company and left them a message that he was no longer living there was a now deceased. Moreover, I left them the phone number of one the son that I talked to on the phone.

I don't know what else to do, give me some feed back because I don't want to pay a bill that is not under my name.

You do not have to pay that bill, and the utility company is not expecting you to pay it.

It is actually against the law to open someone else's mail, so next time just write "No longer at this address" in large letters on the former tenant's mail and stick it back in the box for pickup.

As the last poster said, you just need to write either "No Longer Lives Here" or "Deceased" on the mail and send it back. It will then be up to the Electric company or the collections company to collect from the previous owner's estate, if there is an estate.

As a side note, you might start to get calls from collectors. If you see strange numbers showing up on your caller ID, let the call go to voice mail/answering machine/whatever and then Google the phone number. If it is a collection agency, call them back and tell them that the person they are looking for is deceased, you are not related to the person, here is the number of a contact for this persons estate, and you would like your number taken off of their list.

You are not responsible for this bill at all and the electric company will not shut off your electric simply because you did not pay it.

Yep.....you don't have to do anything. You didn't use the electricity, so you don't have to pay for it. It's just possible that the company might pretend otherwise and start harrassing you, but if you stand firm then they will lose. It was kind of you to try to help the surviving family of the deceased tenant and the company. You've done your bit.

I only opened the bill because I wanted to be courteous and tell them why the bills were not being paid. I also left the number of the person responsible for the estate. I then told them not to mail anymore bills to the current address that I now live at.

You've behaved like a model citizen. And don't worry about having opened somebody else's mail either.....it might be technically illegal (though I'm not sure it is), but I'm sure they'll never bust you for that. If they should try, just tell them it wasn't properly sealed in the first place, and the contents fell out.