Woman wins $8600 over home electricity mistake

Nicole Niceforo, spent roughly 10 years paying for the electricity of the apartment directly above hers. Picture: Fox5

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This is certainly some type of power trip.

A woman who rationed her airconditioning and scrubbed dishes by hand for years to tame a stubbornly high electric bill has finally learned why the number never dropped.

The electricity provider had been charging her for the unit upstairs. Her account had been swapped with that of the apartment one floor up.

“For 10 years, I was afraid to use my airconditioning,” Nicole Niceforo said.

The provider, Con Edison, has since owned up to the blunder in writing and cut her refunds topping $6,000 (AUD $8,600). 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, who lives in New York, 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.

Niceforo said she rationed her air conditioning and washed dishes by hand as her bills kept climbing. Picture: Fox5

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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 politicians have described a six-year refund period as a longstanding 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.

Emails show she asked Con Ed in September 2016 to send a technician to check her meter, but the utility referred her to building management. Picture: Fox5

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Crossed meters are a known headache in multi-unit buildings, and Niceforo is hardly the first customer to get burned.

In a separate case, a homeowner overpaid roughly $11,000 (AUD $15,600) across seven years after their meter was mixed up with a neighbour’s, even after shelling out for upgrades meant to cut their power use.

Con Ed itself has a rap sheet of head-scratching bills in the borough. The utility once apologised to a Queens man who was billed $38 million (AUD $54.5 million), an amount later knocked down to the $74 (AUD $106) he actually owed. Another New Yorker said she kept receiving bills addressed simply to the utility pole outside her home, starting with one for $5,000 (AUD $7100).

The stakes are only getting higher as power costs climb. Queens Borough President Donovan Richards and union members have rallied against Con Ed’s proposed rate increases, part of a broader pushback from local officials over affordability.