Virginia Man Pays His $350 Electric Bill In Pennies

Rather than get upset about his $350 electric bill, John Almany found a unique way to pay it �- in pennies.

Almany tells the 'Bristol Herald Courier' that he and his brother Gary came up with the idea and delivered more than 29,000 to Bristol Virginia Utilities.

"I thought I'd make light of the situation," jokes Almany. "Everybody gets mad, but there's nothing anyone can do about it."

His first challenge, Almany says, was finding that many pennies.

"I called some nearby banks to see if I could exchange cash for pennies," Almany said. "We got all the way to the w's in the phone book. One bank gave me $170 in pennies and the other $123."

That many pennies weighs about 170 pounds, so the two men worked to carry the duffle bags into BVU's Lee Highway office.

"We pulled into BVU about 2 PM and took the bags of unrolled pennies to the pay counter. To make my case better, I noticed a man just paid cash right before me. I laid my bill on the counter and told the lady, 'Here is my bill and I'm here to pay every penny of it.'"

After about 20 seconds of silence, Almany then explained what that meant.

"She seemed shocked and told me, 'We can't take that.' She said we'd have to wrap that up and repeated they couldn't accept it. I asked her if she was refusing my payment and she said she wasn't," says Almany. "They said they didn't have the manpower to count all those pennies and I said as much as BVU is billing its customers, they ought to have all the manpower they need."

BVU employees held a prolonged discussion with supervisors before eventually accepting his coins. They then spent about two hours counting just $26.

With his point made, Almany says he took the rest of the pennies to a coin machine, and paid the balance of his bill in larger forms of cash a few days later.

Was it worth the trouble? "It was worth every penny," says Almany.

Since then the company has enacted a payment policy which includes acceptance of no more than $10 in unrolled coins.

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