There's being neighborly, and then there's unintentionally paying your neighbor's utility bill for years on end. The latter is the tale of Ken Wilson, a longtime resident of one Unit 90 in an apartment complex in Vacaville, California. As KOLD reports, Wilson was distressed when his utility bills spiked recently, and bought a device to monitor his usage. "Even after I turned off my breakers, I kept going outside to check my meter to see if it was still running and it was still running. And I couldn't believe it," Wilson tells ABC7.
Wilson called his utility company, PG&E, who sent a worker out—only to discover that Wilson's meter was linked to Unit 91, not his Unit 90. Wilson has resided in his apartment since 2006, and thinks he's probably been paying the wrong utility bill since. Meanwhile, somebody else has been paying his, per CBS News. PG&E disagrees slightly, saying that its preliminary investigation shows that "the meter number for the customer's apartment was being billed to another apartment since potentially 2009."
For now, the utility has credited Wilson for $600, the amount he is estimated to have overpaid the last three years, per CBS. "I just hope this story is going to help others," he says. "I can't be the only one." (More strange stuff stories.)