Nova Scotia Power customers frustrated with inaccurate and high power bills had the chance to speak directly to representatives from the company as the utility holds provincewide engagement sessions.
Armed with copies of their bills and photos of smart meter readings, many expressed concerns about increased costs since the utility’s cybersecurity breach this past spring.
Stolen data from the cyberattack included names, birth dates, email addresses, home addresses, customer account information, driver’s licence numbers and, in some cases, bank account numbers and social insurance numbers.
It also destroyed the company’s meter communication system, so the company started using estimates based on the season.
Some customers say their recent bills have skyrocketed and are inaccurate.
“As far as my bills are, I pay way much higher than a lot of people who have bigger homes and more electricity,” said customer Catherine Pearson, who attended the event at the Truro Legion on Thursday.
“I thought (I’d) get a refund of some money, supposedly on my next bill. I was hoping for a little more.”
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Several customers coming in and out of the community session told Global News they attended because of unusually high power bills and were hoping to get some answers by talking with a representative face-to-face.
Pearson said the representative told her that she would receive a refund for what she was overcharged. She said if she’s overcharged again, she’ll be ready.
“This all my records from when they had the breach. Every day I wrote down how much usage I used,” she said.
The company’s CEO, Peter Gregg, vowed to fix any billing issues when speaking to a legislative committee last month.
“The meters throughout this event have recorded accurate usage. We’re confident the accurate energy usage on each meter is accurate. So once we connect those, we can actually use the actual data,” he told MLAs on Nov. 25.
On Thursday, Nova Scotia Power says it’s making progress in restoring its reading system.
“We still have a lot of customers who are receiving estimated bills on a regular basis,” said Chris Lanteigne, customer care director with Nova Scotia Power.
“We’re working hard to restore our systems and we believe in the coming weeks we’re going to start to get meters communicating with us so we can populate bills that way with full restoration by the end of March.”
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