WHAT THE MASTER TOLD ME!
My water heater went on the fritz. I ask my son what to do about this. He said he’d call Gazprom and have a master sent to fix it.
Early the next morning the master came and went right to work disassembling my hot water heater. He replaced some screens and an igniter and made some adjustments and the water heater worked like new.
I ask him what I owed him for his work. He ask me if I had a copy of my gas bill. I produce a copy of my last bill and he pointed to a charge of 190 rubles and said, “That is what you pay each month for my service.” A pleasant surprise!
I thought this might be a good opportunity to ask where the gas meter was.
He said you don’t have a meter. You don’t pay for the gas. You only pay Gazprom to deliver it to you. The gas already belongs to the Russian people.
Gazprom buys the gas it takes from the ground from the Russian people and sells it at a profit to other countries, but it delivers the gas to the people of Russia at a price that covers the cost of doing so.
Suddenly I was glad that I didn’t have an electric range. Amazing!