News10NBC Investigates: Palmyra family gets $13K bill from NYSEG

Jennifer Lewke News10NBC

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PALMYRA, N.Y. – If you think you’ve got billing issues with RG&E or NYSEG, wait until you hear the story of what a Wayne County family is facing. 

For months News10NBC has been exposing major billing and customer service issues at RG&E, but its sister company, NYSEG isn’t doing much better. 

Many NYSEG customers have been facing similar issues, including Cooper Campbell. He lives in Palmyra with his girlfriend and their two young kids and have been following our coverage of the issues.

“I just honestly didn’t think it was going to hit us,” Campbell tells News10NBC.

That was until late last month when their NYSEG bill arrived.

“She (Campbell’s Girlfriend) was just like, ‘oh my God, I can’t believe this, come here, come here take a look at this’ and I just laughed when I saw it because there was just no possible way.  The bill for $13,456,” Campbell recalls.

$13,456.14 to be exact and in case you’re wondering about the size of their home and what the typical bill looks like.

“It’s about 1200 square feet and the previous invoice was $127.34,” he says.

If you look closely at the bill, it claims the family used nearly 100,000 kilowatts of electricity in three days.  That’s more than 10 times what the average home uses in a year. They figured it was an amusing billing mistake and called to get it corrected but.

“We’ve tried to email, to call and we just haven’t gotten anywhere,” Campbell explains. 

He’s now worried the system that messed up the bill could also trigger a shut-off notice and they’ve got young kids.

“I’m glad we don’t have auto-pay because we wouldn’t have a penny in our account,” Campbell says.

News10NBC has also been fielding complaints from customers who are trying to remove auto-pay from their accounts but being told that it requires a phone call to customer service. The customer service lines, as we’ve been reporting, are constantly backed up and it can take days to get through. 

After News10NBC contacted RG&E and NYSEG, Campbell’s bill was pulled and reviewed. It turns out, it was a billing error that the utility promised would be rectified by Friday.

As for the auto-pay issues, a spokeswoman tells News10NBC that if a customer is signed up for e-billing, they can cancel auto-pay online. If a customer still receives paper bills through the mail, they need to call customer service in order to cancel auto-pay. 

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