Outraged NYC woman discovers shes been paying her neighbors electricity bill for a decade

This is certainly some type of power trip.A Queens woman who rationed her air conditioning and scrubbed dishes by hand for years to tame a stubbornly high electric bill has finally learned why the number never dropped. Con Edison had been charging her for the unit upstairs.Her account had been swapped with that of the apartment one floor up, a mix-up first reported by Fox 5 NY.“For 10 years, I was afraid to use my air conditioning,” Nicole Niceforo told the station.The utility has since owned up to the blunder in writing and cut her refund checks topping $6,000.

But there’s a catch.The money covers only the most recent six years, leaving close to four years of overpayments, plus interest, still on the table.Niceforo smelled trouble early.

Back in September 2016, she emailed Con Ed asking for a technician to check her meter, and the utility punted her to the building’s managers instead.She came away feeling she had nowhere to turn, and the bills kept rolling in month after month.It took more than nine years and another push for a test before the swap was finally exposed.

Niceforo described an endless loop of phone calls and mounting exasperation, and said she felt both furious and vindicated once the truth came out.Don’t count on Albany to make her whole.The state Department of Public Service passed on ordering Con Ed to pay more, siding with the utility’s position that billing fixes stop at six years, and said it has no record of a formal complaint from her in 2016.That six-year window is nothing new.

State lawmakers have described a six-year refund period as a long-standing utility industry norm that the Public Service Commission follows.In other words, the clock was ticking on Niceforo’s money long before anyone figured out what went wrong.In a statement, Con Ed said it works with customers who believe their bills don’t reflect their actual usage, and it stood firm on the six-year cap.Crossed meters are a known headache in multi-unit building...