ST. ANN, Mo. – First Baptist Church in St. Ann is a mall congregation with a big problem.
“On Feb. 7, we received a bill for five years’ worth of service from 2020 to now,” church trustee Frank Daniels said.
The more than $20,000 bill left Daniels in disbelief.
“I’m also the bookkeeper for the church, and I’m the one that pays the checks and all that. I see what we’ve got, and I know that that’s not a bill we can afford to pay,” he said.
What Daniels can’t figure out is how it even happened. In 2019, he tells us Spire installed a new meter on the north side of the church. He thought Spire was abandoning the gas line and meter behind the church, as a document from the utility he shared with FOX 2 News indicates.
“The account number we used to have for the account moved along with meter to the new location,” Daniels said.
In the five years that followed, the service was billed as normal. But when that startling statement arrived, Daniels noticed something he hadn’t seen before.
“This is a completely new account number, and we’ve never received any letters or notices about the account number, even existing,” he said.
Daniels contacted Spire to figure out what was going on.
“They explained it had to be some kind of mistake, but they said the gas doesn’t belong to us,” he said. “Somebody’s got to pay for it, and unfortunately, we’re that someone that they expect to pay for it.”
That’s when Daniels called FOX 2. We contacted Spire and they told us they’d investigate. It wasn’t long before the company sent a crew of people to the church to meet with Daniels.
“The supervisor explained the original intention was to remove one meter completely. They decided it would be cheaper for us if they left one meter in existence at the back of the building and that serves the three furnaces in our original building,” he said. “And then the new line services the furnaces in our newer building. But they never told us that. They admitted it was a mistake to have not caught that sooner. They apologized 10 times for that mistake and for letting it go on that long.”
Spire offered to erase four years’ worth of billing if the church agreed to pay for one year, Daniels said.
“I think if we hadn’t called you guys, which, I really appreciate whatever you did, because they were really willing to work with us on it and explain completely what happened,” Daniels said. “Once we knew what went on, we were fine with it.”
In a statement, Spire told us: “Serving our customers is central to what we do, so when we fall short of their expectations, we work to resolve any issues. We appreciate the church leadership’s patience and willingness to work through a solution, and we value their business.”
“There was a lot of people praying about getting this thing resolved. All of the sudden, bang, bang, bang it happened. You called the next morning.” said Daniels.
A prayer answered and a problem solved.
“God works it out for us when we can’t,” Daniels said.