That's terrible, I can't imagine how difficult it is to be without electricity for so long, but even worse, making you pay for when it isn't working?? That's insane. You should not have to pay when there is no service. We have a post-pay system here, but it's part fees and part usage, so if you're not using it, your usage would be less. However I think if there is an outage for long enough, you can get a deduction on your fees cost as well? I'm not sure though. In my case, the fees are half of my bill on average. For a big family in a big house that uses a lot of electric, the fees are probably only a small fraction.