Illinois Family Receives $107,000 Electric Bill From ComEd

Living in the Chicago land area means paying an electric bill that on average is 15 percent higher than the national average but for the Rajter family of Oak Park that number was slightly more steep this week when Kathy Rajter opened her bill to discover she owed $107,625.16.

The bill claimed that Kathy and her husband David had burned through 1,647,499 kilowatt hours of power, slightly higher then the $276 worth of power her family had used the month before when their meter read 2,236 kilowatt hours.

Speaking to the Chicago Sun Times Kathy proclaimed:

“The taxes (and fees alone) on the bill were $16,000.”

The worst part about the bill might be that the Rajter’s use automatic bill pay and had she set the bill to the side it could have literally wiped out her checking and savings accounts in one swoop.

The error in billing came after Oak Park changed to a new third party provider for power consumption in the hopes of saving 51,000 residents some money. That provider Integrys uses ComEd for billing and somewhere along the supply chain management line the amount of power consumed was incorrectly entered.

ComEd was quick to respond to her automatic billing issue by setting her amount owed to $0 while they further investigate what caused the power reading to occur in the first place.

As Kathy was quick to point out:

“On (Friday), I’ll be on the phone making sure I still have money in the bank.”

Would you freak out if you were hit with a $107,000 electric bill out of the blue or would you immediately assume it was a mistake and contact the electric company to get your bill fixed as soon as possible?