Posted on 11/14/2004 8:52:39 AM PST by Willie Green
THE ISSUE
Soon after the city of Monroe installed an automated electricity meter at JB's Midway Barbecue in April, the city's utility department notified owner Jim Benton the restaurant was using much more power than the old meter indicated.
First, his power bill increased from between $800 and $900 to $1,200 a month, Benton said. Then, he received a letter from the city informing him that a city analysis showed his old meter had been under-registering for almost a decade.
He would be billed almost $11,000 -- three years' worth of back charges.
Benton learned that a city policy allows Monroe's energy services department to back-charge up to three years if officials discover a meter has under-registered, even if a city utility worker caused the problem.
(Excerpt) Read more at charlotte.com ...
It's not quite that simple.
First of all, he was undercharged for reasons totally beyond his control.
More importantly, he runs a business. The pricing of his product includes current incidental costs. This is not a residence, where no such factors exist.
Finally, I would want an independent lab to test the old unmodified meter to verify the inaccuracy. I deal with bureaucrats. Many can be uniformly dumb as bricks and uncompromisingly dense and arbitrary.
Our records show you haven't been paying enough for your power bill.
Please send the money to your local city-controlled utility monopoly no questions asked.
And by the way I just added 25% to my consumption last week so don't try to prove anything with usage records.
The simple and obvious solution, if in fact it was underregistering through no fault of the businessman, would be to pro-rate the amount of the undercharge over the following three years, without interest. The owner would be paying for what he received, but would not be unduly burdened by the utility's mistake.
Well, he thought so. :-0
Because it's unreasonable that a client is responsible for some unknown future cost resulting from a CITY mistake today. He'd have had no way of knowing if or when the meter wasn't functioning right, and no reason or ability to budget for such a surprise bill now. They can correct the problem when found and begin charging the correct amount, but I would resent and reject that they can hit me with an $11,000 lump sum bill when they have no proof of actual usage, just a wild a$$ guess, and, I might add, a w.a.g where the benefit of any error gives the highest benefit to the city.
Nope.
It's not just utilities. All public bureaucracies suffer from that same disease. The cure for ineptitude and incompetence is free services from the private sector.
It's a restaurant. Lights are nothin'..... It's the grills and the ovens that are on all the time.
How do you know the old meter under charged him?
Maybe it's the new meter that was faulty?
Seems to me the burden of proof is on the city. He paid his bills, not his fault if they were inaccurate. Think he would get a refund if it was the other way around
Under-registering, not failing to register. He was paying $800 when it maybe should have been $1200.
Goodbye to one more independent business.
Like our communist legislators in Arkansas - these "good ole boys" cannot get it into their pin-head brains (if any) that when tax revenues go DOWN from a falling economy, you don't raise the taxes and then wonder why the revenues fell even lower!
A vicious cycle that lawyer/politicians fall into - then if all else fails --- SUE! To hell with the "WORK ETHIC"
Why shouldn't your barber or local eatery be able to decide they should have asked you for more during the last 3 years and send you a bill for the difference? The city sold him a product, they set the price and he agreed on it, the deal was done, now they want more. No other business but govt. would be allowed to get away with this absent any evidence of fraud.
LOL!
Not all...
On a recent trip one of my suitcases apparently fell off the airline luggage "train", was dragged under the cart God-knows-how-far to the point that the suitcase material was worn off and part of the clothes inside...
Upon presenting the remnants of the suitcase at the claims counter, the first question was... "Are you sure it wasn't already like that when you checked it in?"
Yikes! How the heck do you rack up a $800 Utility bill? Use 1000 Watt Floods in every socket?
"Policy" is not law... It has no legal standing..
The utility failed to insure their equipment was working properly..
The customer is not responsible..
The first question his lawyer should ask the city is if they have ever refunded money from over charging a customer. I bet not. Silly question.
They can't ethically charge him for power they can't show he actually used. At best they're guessing based on current data which may not reflect use during the period in question.
A bill like this could put him out of business especially since we know they'll nag him to death, get a lien and who knows what else to collect.
The only "gotcha" is he should've had some reason to know the meter was wrong such as a sudden plunge in his bill about TEN years ago. Even then, it's been so long that could be explained by any number of things including rate changes, hours of operation fluctuations, expansion, remodeling, change in appliances, etc., etc.
He most certainly needs a lawyer to protect his rights because I can guarantee he'll get "screwed" by the city.
You cannot tell with any certainty how much he was undercharged. The City is saying that the meter was malfunctioning three years ago. My questions are these:
How much was it malfuctioning?
If it was malfuctioning, how do you know it wasn't OVERCHARGING for a period of time in the past?
After all, how can you trust a meter that is malfunctioning to give you an accurate reading of how much it was malfunctioning?
The City has no chance. They will settle for much less if anything.
There would be no way of knowing until a signficant difference in usage was detected. That happened when the new meter was installed. Then it would be a matter of analyzing the reason for the disparity: which meter is more accurate? The old one or the new one? If the old one proved accurate, then the new one would be faulty and should be replaced. That apparently wasn't the case, though.
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