Mistake has woman unknowingly paying neighbour’s hydro bill for 5 years

Watch the video above: Find out what happened after Sean O’Shea investigated the woman’s complaint. 

TORONTO – A Hamilton woman was stuck paying for her neighbour’s utility bills due to a mistake by the hydro company that went unnoticed for five years.

Five years ago, Carla Paradisi moved into a roughly 2,000 square foot townhome condo in the West Mountain area of Hamilton. She hadn’t lived in a townhome before and “didn’t have a really good idea” of how much her hydro bills had been prior to moving.

She moved in and then the bills started; $250, $280, $320. They fluctuated but never dropped below $250 she said.

“I do remember thinking ‘gosh, that seems a little high.’ I’m sure I called them because I thought it was high,” she said. “Everybody told me West Mountain is more expensive than where I used to live so I just assumed that it must be what the bill was.”

She was perplexed as to how her bill could be so high. She lives alone and works all day. She’s not often at home in the evening and rarely needs to do a full load of laundry.

“Because the bills to me, were high, I lived in darkness. When people would come over they’d laugh, they’d say ‘it’s so dark, can we put a light on.’”

On October 8, 2013 she came home from work and found a hydro worker outside her home.

“There was a gentleman outside and he said ‘oh you live here?’ when he saw me pull in and I said yes.  And he asked you know’ is your hydro on?’ and I said well I’m just getting home, but my garage door didn’t home so I don’t think so. I came in and sure enough the power was out,” she said.

He told her it would come back on soon and he left. She later got a call from Horizon, the utility company, advising her a mistake had caused her to be billed for the power usage of her neighbours family of four people.

“This is actually extremely rare,” Sheri Ojero, manager of internal communications at Horizon Utilities said. “Our billing error rate is very, very low. Far less than one per cent in fact. This is an isolated case where in fact, we noticed the error ourselves and we contacted the customer to inform them of the error.”

Horizon Utilities offered her the difference between what she paid and her actual bill as credit. But only for two of the five years. She declined, demanding the full five years and filed two complaints with the Ontario Energy Board.

But the OEB regulations stipulate utility companies only redeem two years of billing error. So she called Global News.

After that the vice-president of customer relations for Horizon Utilities contacted Paradisi and offered her the full five-year refund.

“We will be giving her a reimbursement based on her actual consumption,” Ojero said.

-With files from Sean O’Shea