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Story time:
I had a 650 sq ft condo in Yaletown. Baseboard heaters, concrete building.
My summer bills were $20 per month. My winter bills were $150 per month. So $300 every two months.
For the first few years, I lived with it and thought that's just how it is.
Then people started telling me I was crazy to be paying that.
What tipped me over the edge was I went on holiday for like 2 weeks and came back, the monthly bill was still very high.
So I started coimplaining to BC Hydro.
Of course they were like yadda yadda, here's a pamphlet on how to lower your usage.
I'm like, I'm not even using it, and it's still costing me money.
So I talked to electrician and he told me to shut the main breaker and then check the meter to see if it's still spinning.
Had to convince the building caretaker to give me access to the room where the meters are because it's locked.
Anyways, sure enough, my meter said I was using power when I wasn't.
After getting nowhere with BC Hydro on the phone, I went down to their offfice downtown to speak to them in person.
They have a customer service desk and the guy was suprisingly helpful, as opposed to the phone agents who were useless.
They opened an "Investigation" and after 2 weeks confirmed that my bill was incorrectly linked to my neighbour's meter, and my neighbour's bill was linked to my meter.
The meter numbers were correct on the invoices. But the wiring was backwards, and probably done that way during construction.
So for years, my neighbour was using all that power, and I was paying for it.
After some back and forth, Hydro did the math and calculated the difference between the total billings for each residence over several years, and I got a large refund.
I took it as a credit on my Hydro bill and never had to pay a bill for a very long time haha.
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