Hampton woman seeks answers from N.B. Power after meter mix-up
Mix-up came to light after a year of unusually high consumption
A Hampton woman is concerned she may have been paying the wrong power bill for the last year.
N.B. Power discovered that Jessica Ferguson's account was tied to the wrong meter in December 2024 but wouldn't say how long the problem persisted.
"I have no idea when or where it started," Ferguson said in an interview.
"They actually didn't tell us anything. They just went on with our billing, as is, with the new meter that they set up, and it wasn't until I called them and said 'Look, like, you guys told us that there was a meter mix-up. What does that mean?'"
Ferguson first thought something was wrong when she received the settlement bill for her equalized payment plan in October 2024. After years of usually receiving a small credit for overpayment, she was told she owed nearly $3,000.
"To be sitting there and looking at the bill being $3,000 more that we had now to pay … I was overwhelmed," Ferguson said.
It wasn't until someone from N.B. Power came to her house to drop off a letter about the payment that it was discovered the meter on Ferguson's house did not match the one on her bill.
But she hasn't been able to get answers about how far back the issue dates. That's when she began looking back over the past five years to see how the consumption in 2024 stacked up to previous years.
"Why are we paying as much as we are? Why is our consumption so high?" she said. "And that's when I really started to dig into the past year of consumption and then going back for five years to see what our trends were to realize that the entire year of 2024 was excessively more than any other year.
"That was an eye-opener to us because we don't think we were using anymore than we had last year or the year before."
The numbers show a kilowatt hour increase of at least 250 in every month, including five months with at least a 650 kWh jump. The largest was a 1,046 kWh spike in April 2024.
That's with three fewer people in the house in 2024 than there were in 2023, Ferguson said.
Then, for months, she didn't hear from the utility, until she called to ask about the mix-up. At that point a representative told her the issue had been fixed and her bills for December, January and February would be estimated based on the previous year's consumption.
The estimate for December was nearly 1,000 kWh higher than the previous year, although a representative from N.B. Power saying December 2024 was only 0.2 per cent colder than the previous year.
In January, the estimate was a whopping 3,713 kWh, nearly 30 per cent higher than the previous year. N.B. Power's own numbers determined that month was 16.5 per cent colder than the previous year.
"As these numbers clearly indicate, the usage is simply following the weather pattern. In other words, heat load," an N.B. Power representative said in response to Ferguson's concerns.
Ferguson said that in March, when a new meter with the correct number was installed, her consumption immediately returned to the range it's been since she moved into her house in 2018.
N.B. Power previously told CBC News that when a mix-up is discovered, the utility works with the customer to find out what went wrong and find some remedy for the problem.
A Fredericton man recently received a $5,000 credit after mistakenly paying his neighbour's bill for nearly two years.
Ferguson said she's running out of options and has asked John Herron her MLA and the natural resources minister, for help. Herron responded to her email with concern that "something is amiss here" and promised to get his staff to look further into it.
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