Yeah, I'd say drop it as well. Sounds like you have enough on your plate - maybe let this one go...gotta choose your battles.
As to all you prompt-never-missed-a-bill-in-my-life types, good for you, must be impressive to have such a lifelong, perfect record of never missing a payment. However I'm sure Funola is very much aware of the penalty of missing payments and already outlined his reasons - terminally ill family member - which can tend to distract someone. When my father had cancer, the rest of my life shut down for a little while.
My personal beef with power companies is how they mangle the mature trees in our neighbourhood to 'prevent power line damage'. They bring in these chainsaw cowboys and they go to town on anything remotely near the lines. Thank God I'm on the other side of the street and there are no power lines on my property. It looks like a tornado hit the trees from about 15' up. The trees look pitiful. Funny how they can mangle a tree someone planted 20,30 years ago on their property all in the supposition that said tree could
possibly lose a limb and break a power line. I suppose that 'infrastructure cost' portion of my bill is for fixing something other than power lines.
Anyway, thx for the rant and good luck Funola!