Texas woman receives $16,000 electric bill
PFLUGERVILLE, Texas (KXAN) – It’s a $16,000 bill Kelley Brooks was not expecting.
“I was just shocked,” the 24-year-old said. “This is crazy, I was like there must be a mistake somehow.”
She moved into her Pflugerville one bedroom apartment at the Century Stone Hill Apartments in early February and decided to start her electric service with Ambit Energy.
But just after roughly two weeks of being in her apartment, Brooks got an email stating her invoice was ready. She later received the bill in the mail with a statement date of March 15 and a due date of April 2.
“It was $16,080.42,” said Brooks. “When I first saw it I just laughed it off because I thought there’s no way.”
“Currently, today, it’s at $16,363.80 counting late fees and anything else they want to throw in there,” she said.
When Brooks contacted Ambit Energy, a company representative told her they would file a High Usage Dispute case and they would take a look at her meter readings and run some tests. She says the company representative also said not to worry — her electricity would not be cut off.
Brooks says no one called her back to inform her of the tests and the results. She says when she called Ambit on April 24, she was informed the results of the meter test had come in on April 17 stating they were “accurate,” according to Brooks.
“Looking at my bill the usage still doesn’t make sense and no one can explain to me how one person has used 95,893 kilowatts in the span of 12 days,” she said.
However, on Wednesday, Brooks lost power sometime in the early afternoon and later on, in the evening, an Oncor Electric employee stopped by her apartment to turn it back on.
Ambit works with Oncor Electric for meter readings. KXAN reached out to Ambit who says they contacted Brooks and currently have the account protected.
@4-Hour News 8’s sister station, KXAN, reached out to Oncor who released this statement:
“We apologize for this error and the inconvenience it has caused our customer. A clerical error caused this customer to receive an incorrect bill. We have already contacted the customer’s Retail Electric Provider to correct the issue and will be reaching out to personally apologize to her.” – Oncor Representative
Brooks is just thrilled the lights are back on. Now, she’s looking forward to her “first right bill since I moved into my first apartment.”