Tag Archives: living in rural Mexico

February 22, 2025 · 7:45 am

First Disasterous Billing Cycle from CFE

Now that we had electricity, we went shopping! We bought a fridge, having not had one for the 19 years we’ve lived in La Yacata. We also bought a TV, but since I didn’t want anyone using my internet when I was teaching, we had to get a DVD player, which was fine since we’ve accumulated an expansive movie library over the years. All of which meant we used electricity.

Anyway, the day came to pay the piper. In this case, the flutist tooting their merry little tune was CFE, and they wouldn’t make it easy for us. To be fair, we didn’t have street signs up yet. The signs had been ordered but had not yet arrived. And then, to complicate matters, the numbers used to input the connections into the CFE system were lot numbers, not house numbers (because, again, we had applied for the official numbers, but they had not yet been granted). However, how hard would it have been to ASK someone when the CFE bill delivery crew came to deliver the bills? ANYONE would have sent them along to me, and I could have helped them organize the pile of 43 recibos.

But wait, there weren’t 43 recibos. At best, eight bills were delivered, haphazardly, I might add. They were stuck on the muretes (metered posts) rather than slid under the doors. I went around and collected them so they wouldn’t blow away in the wind, then sent messages to the owners that they could pick up their recibos from me.

So what happened to the rest? I didn’t get a bill. My son didn’t get a bill. My sister-in-law didn’t get a bill. My father-in-law didn’t get a bill. Well, I was going to have to go and find out. So I took pictures of all the meters and the list of names of those included in the program and marched my fanny down to the local CFE office.

The lovely lady at the desk couldn’t tell me what happened to the rest of the recibos. Apparently, this sort of shenanigans wasn’t unheard from the local office (See ¡Les cortan la luz! Denuncian que CFE dejó de entregar recibos sin avisarles). She could provide me with duplicate bills from the names on the list I gave her. Well, that was something. She went through the list, one by one, printing out these duplicados. There were eight that weren’t in the system. I showed her the pictures of the meters. She took pictures of my pictures from my phone and sent them on to the Salvatierra office. One had the wrong name attached to the meter entered into the system, and the name owner had paid the bill for the meter owner, which also needed to be addressed.

She implied the eight missing meters were serious issues, giving me the impression that she believed they were stolen and installed illegally. Well, CFE installed them, so if they were stolen, that would be CFE’s bad, not the colonos of La Yacata, but whatever.

I took the duplicados and filed them away (which turned out to be a blessing later). Instead of having them pick up these duplicates, I sent messages to the 43 colonos explaining that if they had not received a recibo they would need to take a photo of their meter and go to the CFE office to get a copy of their account information AND PAY IT.

The amount on all the recibios was 235 pesos to cover the deposit for the connection. Some people squawked about the price, but for the colossal investment CFE made, stringing the wires from the intersection, five transformers, 20+ new posts, connecting the individual houses, and providing the meters, 235 pesos was NOTHING.

I went to pay ours, my son’s, my sister-in-law’s, and my father-in-law’s. While I was in line at the machines to pay, another colono who was at the CFE office asked me to pay theirs and gave me the cash so he could get back to work. I guess I don’t have any work or anything, but whatever. I paid them all.

But, wouldn’t you know it, four individuals forgot to pay their bill. Not surprisingly, CFE had NO trouble finding La Yacata to cut off their service. Those individuals would have to make arrangements with CFE to reestablish service. There wasn’t anything more I could do for them.

The second billing cycle bills should be arriving this week in La Yacata. We shall see how it goes.

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Start from the beginning with La Yacata Revolution: How NOT to Buy a Piece of Heaven in Mexico, available on Amazon.

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Filed under Electricity issues

Tagged as CFE, electricity issues in Mexico, expat in Mexico, La Yacata Revolution, living in rural Mexico

February 15, 2025 · 9:51 am

Power Outages in La Yacata

Things were trucking along with the electricity until suddenly, they weren’t. A freak hail storm just happened to hit the road the only transformer station in the area was located, which not having internet access (the towers providing internet access apparently went out as well), we didn’t find out until later.

When the power went out, I had my son call and make a report. There was an option to report for the entire community, so he did so. The average repair time varied from 10 to 24 hours. I had just stocked my new fridge with perishables. 24 hours would be pushing it. I had no classes that day, so that was one less stressor. Eight hours later, the electricity finally came back.

During the interim, my son went to the corner store in another colonia near us. Here, he discovered the power was out all the way across town as the owner had gleaned this bit of knowledge from customers who had stopped in from various parts of town. He also confirmed that Telcel wasn’t working to add minutes to our phones.

Once I found out that it wasn’t just La Yacata that didn’t have electricity, I felt a little better about the situation. I was imagining all sorts of worse-case scenarios, including CFE coming to take back the installation that connected us to the grid because they believed “we didn’t qualify” or some such nonsense.

Well, less than a month later, the power went out again. This outage seemed to be localized to La Yacata, and the internet was not affected. The power went out 30 minutes before my morning class, so I had my husband haul a desk to the third floor of my son’s house, where the solar batteries had been relocated. It’s an unfinished room with no windows, so the breeze created a sort of vortex, but the internet worked, and there was power to plug my laptop in. I got everything set up minutes before class was due to start and then got a message that the student had canceled. Whew!

I sent a message to Super Prez asking him to call the report in. He did. The estimated time for the service call to the community was 10 hours. Dios Mio! That would interfere with my other classes. Fortunately, in under 2 hours, we were back in business, and I moved my laptop back to my office in the main house. Ahh, the stress!

These incidents made it clear to me that I would not be able to rely exclusively on grid power. The plan is to finish that upstairs room as an emergency bunker for when the lights go out so that I can scramble over there and teach my classes. It seems you have to roll with the punches when it comes to CFE electricity.

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Want to start from the beginning? Check out La Yacata Revolution: How NOT to Buy a Piece of Heaven in Mexico, available on Amazon.

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Filed under Electricity issues

Tagged as electricity in Mexico, La Yacata Revolution, living in rural Mexico

January 21, 2025 · 7:13 am

Downed Lines and New Connections

We hadn’t had electricity for a month when we had our first outage. Fortunately, it was localized to just one house, but still, I couldn’t help thinking–this was why we didn’t have nice things in La Yacata.

What happened, according to the neighbor was a large remolque (dump truck) was going up the hill and caught on the wire connecting to the main line to the house. The damage was bad. Fortunately, it didn’t tear down the main line, just the connecting wire, so there’s that, but still.

I moseyed up the road to take some pictures and sent them to Super Prez, who made a report to CFE. CFE assured him they would be out in 24 hours to fix it. Super Prez also called the owner of the house, who isn’t living there currently, to let them know about the issue.

24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours….came and went—no sign of the CFE repair crew. Two weeks later, the owner called and asked me if I could get Super Prez to follow up. Every time she called CFE asked for a copy of the electricity receipt, which we hadn’t gotten yet. So I sent a message to Super Prez, and he called.

Not an hour later, a CFE truck zoomed by the house. Sadly, they disappeared into the horizon and did not stop to check the line. Later that evening, or the next, I forget which, a CFE truck was driving up and down the roads and finally stopped to ask for directions. Super Prez happened to be here with an update on other matters and got them orientated. However, since the entire pole had been mangled, it would need replaced and they didn’t have that on hand and it would have to be ordered.

While we waited for repairs, the owners of two of the five houses that weren’t included in the original CFE project because of their location approached us to ask about getting the electricity connected. Measurements were taken and considered. Technically, they both were just under the 50-meter maximum from the last installed post. The problem was that the line would need to cross a road and that might cause CFE to say no to their connections. But, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

So, both owners went to CFE to ask about it, but both were refused. They came to me with the new requirements, which I reviewed and sent to Super Prez.

Requirements for Contracting:

For Tenants:
- Mandatory submission of:
  - Copy of the lease agreement.
  - Copy of the INE (official ID) of both the landlord and the tenant.
Power of Attorney:
- If the owner cannot be present to sign the contract:
  - Submit a simple power of attorney signed by two witnesses.
  - Copies of the INEs of the witnesses.
Ownership Documentation:
- Valid proof of ownership issued by the local delegate (applies to rural communities).
- Copy of the current property tax receipt.
- Valid proof of the official property number.
Official Identification:
- Copy of a valid INE, passport, or professional license (both sides).
Tax Identification and Fiscal Status:
- RFC with homoclave or current tax status certificate (issued within the month prior to contracting) when service invoicing is required.
- Mandatory for businesses.
Contact Information:
- Email address and phone number with national area code.
Technical Preparation:
- Printed photographs of:
  - Electrical connection box (mufa).
  - Base.
  - Grounding rod.
  - Circuit breaker.
Visibility of Official Number and Meter:
- Printed photo of the official property number visible on the facade and/or meter base.
- Photo of the nearest neighbor’s meter number.
For Legal Entities:
- Copy of the certificate of incorporation.
- Copy of the INE of the legal representative.
- Copy of the notarized power of attorney.

As we are neither an officially sanctioned independent community nor part of the municipio, the collection of documents was a bit hodgepodge. These included the new application, a copy of the property certificate, which served as the valid proof of ownership issued by the local delegate (Super Prez), a copy of the INE (official ID) of the owners, a copy of the articles of incorporation, a copy of the INE of the legal representative (Super Prez), a copy of the power of attorney, a copy of the current property tax receipt, and printed photographs of the electrical connection box, base, and the meter number of the nearest neighbor.

I organized this packet of paper into individual folders for the applying colonos and had them come and pick it up along with the photos of the various items requested in the list. One colono served as the guinea pig and took it to the CFE office where they were told that in addition to the paperwork turned in, he must present the número oficial vigente (official address number), which we didn’t have.

Our application for those numbers had already been given to the presidencia and they were sitting on the paperwork. So, Super Prez went to the CFE office in Salvatierra to find out if there was a workaround.

The downed line did eventually get fixed, but little did we realize that this was just the beginning of our issues with CFE.

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Need to catch up on our first failed attempts at modernization in La Yacata? Then La Yacata Revolution is where you should start!