National Grid, you asses!

Dear Ms. Ferrante, Mr. Tarr, and the "lucky" staffers who will hopefully have answers for me:

First of all, let me warn you, I am new to Massachusetts - I've lived here for less than a year, and I've only been in Gloucester since September. I did not find anything specific to my question on the internet, no doubt because I don't have a particularly well-formed question. So, I resort to the age-old solution to nearly every problem - write to my legislators!

Last night, I experienced a particularly unpleasant situation. I arrived home from work (in Watertown) just before 7 pm. While on my drive home, I had planned out dinner - a nice little pasta dish with roasted chicken, sauteed tomatoes and asparagus, with a modified alfredo sauce - not that the menu is terribly relevant to the story. By the time I had entered my apartment, changed into comfortable shoes (who am I kidding - I changed into bare feet), and chopped tomatoes into tiny pieces while pretending to listen as my boyfriend rambled on about his coworkers and their antics, it was nearly 7:30. I turned to light the burner on my stove, and to my abject disappointment tinged with horror, it would not light - there was no gas being dispensed. I attempted to light the other burners, but the sinking feeling in my stomach (that I would not be eating my pasta dish that evening) was proven correct - none of the burners had gas, either.

As I had paid my gas bill, and there was no notice of shut-off on the door, I assumed that my stove somehow managed to die a quiet, yet mysterious and extraordinary death. I decided that since dinner was off the table, I would take a nice, hot shower while mentally composing an e-mail to my landlady. I intended to ponder the most tactful way of saying, "FIX IT. FIX IT NOW." My ponderings proved to be unnecessary - the lukewarm water gradually gave way to bone-chillingly cold water, as opposed to my shower's usual scalding offering.

At this point, I became less concerned with tact.

While I believe in many strange and improbable things, like democracy and the Great Pumpkin, I am simply incapable of of believing that the only two gas-fed appliances in my apartment could experience unremarked demises within hours of each other.

I called National Grid, my gas supplier. My first call, to their customer service line (at 7:38 pm, by my call log) picked up to a recording that announced they were closed, and disconnected me. As I have said, I was no longer concerned with tact. I called the emergency line (at 7:42 pm, again, according to my log).

After a few minutes of listening to menus, I was transferred to a human being, I told her I was calling to report a service outage. I gave her (with some difficulty) my address. She informed me that my service had been cut off, due to non-payment. I gave here the date and amount of my last payment, and she suddenly decided that my service had not been terminated due to nonpayment, and that she would have a technician out to re-connect my gas that evening. We gave up and ordered take-out from Ocean Garden.

Shortly after 9pm, a tired-looking technician arrived and announced that he needed access to the basement (it is through our apartment) to re-connect our gas. We then learned that gas service to all three units in our building had been disconnect. He managed (with some difficulty that I did not quite comprehend) to turn our gas back on. He then ascended to our apartment to relight our pilot lights. After an extended discussion with the thermocouple on the water heater, he announced that we were all set. This was at 9:30 pm.

My question is, are utility companies here allowed to arbitrarily disconnect their victims, I mean, customers, like that? I can understand the usual outages, but disconnecting an entire building because one unit didn't pay their bill (and not telling us) seems somewhat mafia-esque to me. I realize that taking a glacier-fresh shower and having to pay for dinner instead fixing it myself is hardly a tragedy, but given the economic climate, I prefer to save money where I can. (The shower didn't affect my pocketbook, it just put me in a bad mood.)

Does Massachusetts have any laws in place to protect residents, as we are more or less at the mercy of the utility company?

Thank you for you time,
Aynsley