Ombudsman asked to probe billing errors

Hydro One Billing Errors are fueling Ontario customer complaints over electricity bills, overbilling, and estimated reads, prompting an ombudsman probe, ministerial scrutiny, and promises that smart meters and time-of-use billing will deliver accurate, real-time usage.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath has asked Ombudsman André Marin to investigate hydro bill errors, saying she is shocked by the extent ratepayers are being overbilled.

Horwath, who has heard complaints from across Ontario, wrote to the government watchdog urging him to probe the various billing systems.

“Dozens of Ontarians have contacted our office with their own stories of billing errors and a customer complaints process that doesn’t seem to work, including an OEB ruling dispute raised by opposition parties,” she implored Marin.

Speaking to reporters at Queen’s Park, Horwath noted that the mistakes add insult to injury in an era of skyrocketing energy prices across Ontario.

“While Ontarians are being hit hard by electricity costs, we are now finding a growing number of households that are being zapped with major billing errors, like paying for your neighbour's power, on their hydro bills,” she told a news conference.

The NDP chief was flanked by Alan Skeoch, a retired high school teacher from Port Credit, who had almost $12,000 removed from his bank account by Hydro One on December 1 for bills dating back to 2008.

“They just took it. They wiped out our whole account just... weeks before Christmas,” said Skeoch, 72, whose bill was for electricity at a 10-hectare hobby farm near Erin that has been in his family since 1908.

While the $11,907.40 has since been returned to his account — thanks to a media firestorm — he still must pay that amount to the utility over the next 24 months on top of whatever future bills he owes.

“I feel they’ve ripped me off,” he said, noting his monthly bills range from $210 to $477 a month.

Energy Minister Brad Duguid, who called Skeoch when he heard of his plight and then phoned Hydro One president and CEO Laura Formusa, said “it’s less than ideal customer service.”

“I asked Laura to take a look at it and to make sure this isn’t something that happens on a regular basis,” he said.

Duguid said the massive bill is “a symptom of the old, outdated technology… of meter readers and estimates.”

The minister said once the smart-meter program of time-of-use billing, despite 150,000 incorrect bills reported recently, is up and running, such issues “will be a problem of the past.”

“We’re not treating the symptom — we’re solving the problem,” said Duguid.

“The new technology will be real-time reporting of usage, though smart meters give dumb results in some cases. The old technology relies on estimates followed by meter readers verifying usage, which means there sometimes are gaps... either over or under what the estimates were.”

Marin, who made headlines recently for his probe of the so-called “secret law” used by police during last summer’s G20 summit, also tackles some consumer-related matters, including crackdowns on energy retailers in Ontario.

In 2006, he blasted the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation for engaging in “cloak-and-dagger behaviour” and “cutthroat maneuvering around property owners.”

That led to a two-year freeze on property assessments.

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