Actually no. I have worked for law firms for over 20 years and most of the big firms will take a few pro bono cases (meaning they will do it for free), especially something like this that is high profile (has media attention), and is for the public good (help protect other consumers in the future). Just pick up the phone and call a few tort law firms asking if they do pro bono work, and if not can they refer you to someone... Takes just a couple hours and you'll at worst get a free consultation out of it.
@waterside Thy care because how many people they over bill. And yes there are companies that do care. Never give a refund if they don't have to. Or 7 months for a refund is normal in your world .
It's a slippery slope, patience is for the weak though lmao. It takes like an hour to calculate an average usage of a person's utilities. That company probably wasn't worried, but had employees who would get that call and shit themselves not knowing how to proceed, but I'll bet they did get nervous once lawyers and the press got involved, if there's 1 person getting ripped off, there's likely many many more.
Well did you really expect them to pay for a so called ( Up grade ) out of their own pocket ??? Of course they pass it on to the consumer.Just like all the other greedy American corporation's.By the way i hope you know im on your side.I thought about how the first sentence would read while writing the second part and wanted to clarify so it didn't cause an uproar.Lol
PNM does not have AMI smart meters installed on the system as of early 2021. They do have ERT meters in certain areas. ERT meters are not smart meters.
If it was her fault they would have charged her fees and late charges, when she couldn't pay they would have gotten a judgement seizing her home and called her a deadbeat for not paying her bills.
@Just another Bird you know why should they use a service to payh to use a well they have solar panels and everything, then the one thing she cant use them on she gets fucked over... such bs
Once again, big business tramples on the little people. If a customer takes too long to pay, they penalize that person. When they owe a customer money or time, they'll hang onto that money as tight as they can!
Okay counter argument, they have on record the date of activation.. aka the day the error began, they have 11 years of bills, and would have known theres a 5 year gap. I'm just some smuck on the internet and even I could think up "Okay find out how much we are overbilling her, then average it and return it" would have taken nothing more than an excel formula and about 10 minutes, 20-30 if it was all on paper. Instead they took 7 months.
That doesnt work when it comes to utilities. And honestly prices may go up with 2 companies. U would either have to over build and maintain 2 grids in the same area which would cost the consumer or they would have to run off same grid and split cost of grid maint and companies or co ops are not gunna be able to make that work. Same when it comes to internet companies they dont like being in same area due to profits are gunna be alot less and sometimes it isnt economical
It's simple logic the woman has her records from 16 yrs ago given to her by PNM. In court(well in an actual functioning court or as we all call it :"not in the U.S.") those will count.
I work in IT and see the same thing. People don't understand that this data is massive if stored from the beginning of an account. Also by keeping this data they leave themselves open to all kinds of issues. @terry waller
E 10 here in Michigan DTE energy will pay you money to have solar panels on your house if they can produce more electricity then what your house is drawing, to put back on the grid, and they pay you handsomely
I had a landlord that switched numbers on the gas and power meters with the apartment next to mine. It was a duplex and I was paying his mother's bills. She had her TV on 24/7 and an central air conditioning unit. I tried saving power and gas as much as I could and the bill never went down. I couldn't keep up and the power company shut my power off or so they thought. That's how I found out. What a scamming asshole. I was never reimbursed either. It was such a pain I just moved out.
rawrberrys My bill is insane and home is always at 65, but PGE bills keep growing. You can be on hold for hours, literally calling to find out why . I’ve actually filed a complaint with the PUC over hold time taking hours.
It could be many things. Even appliance in your home can do it. Call the power company and ask them if they can do an assessment of your power usage. You can also ask them to assess your bill to see if you're being charged the correct rate. You can call the local PUC there and have them help you too. We had an assessment done and figured out it was our old HVAC. When it finally got replaced our bill went down dramatically.
It's all utility companies. EBMUD overcharged me for years on my water bill. When I moved the service into my name from my mom's we had 4 people in the house, a yard to tend to and a car to wash. After 6 years We were down to 2 people In the house, no car, no yard and the same amount every quarter being charged. No one had opened and read the meter in years. They just used the same estimate year after year.
You do have a point there. She kind of reminds me of a crooked human resource manager. Except the one I'm thinking of has tattoos on her legs. She looks like shit when she wears a dress.
Why is she mad at PNM she's the one that didn't realize she was over paying for 16 years like seriously how the fuck do you pay your bills without looking at them? 😕
She is running a business from her house. I noticed that it was mentioned as a hobby, but clearly she has the equipment to make large quantities of baked goods.
Well 1 get a lawyer, 2 talk we other residents of her rural region the using light company, with same cituation abd go from ther #3 place a phone call to the local Board all way up to the head of state in this matter.
Southern California Edison out here in California just sent me a bill for over 50 dollars saying that was a balance left on my previous residence that i moved out of over a year ago. I said i was told i paid the full balance and they said the total was not calculated on the bill (which of course i can't find) and then i said why am i just getting the bill now and she couldn't explain why. But Edison has been blamed for causing a lot of wildfires out here so they r really making the residents suffer.
Prc needs to get their act together. pnm is only legally responsible for up to a year of overcharging someone, wtf? That's BS. There should be no time limit on that sort of thing especially when they were overcharging her for 16 years straight!!!!!
A friend of mine lived in a condo Town Home for like 15 years. After about 10 years, her electricity was shut off. She'd paid her bill in full, and could prove it, so was concerned. After a LOT of investigation, 2-3 years, and legal action, she found out she'd been paying her neighbor's electricity and they hers, since the day she moved in. And she had paid, on average, 3X+ what she should have paid. 😲 I lived in a rental, with all electric. Every other month, for 16 years, we would get switched to the plan for people with both gas and electric. They allot fewer KWh for that. So our "average monthly bill" during the winter was $800-$1700!!! And never below $500 the rest of the year, for any month misbilled. 🤦🏼
PSO here in Oklahoma charged for two meters. When I tried to find out what was going on, they accused me of lying. Fast forward 5 or 6 months...i was refunded over 250 dollars. I will be warching more closely.
PNM: Overcharges her for 16 years and pays her $2300; takes 7 months Mr Beast: Crashes $1500 car and pays owner 9,000; takes 8 hours (Mr beast wasn't even the one who crashed it, it was his friend.)
Wow when she said "well customers can go to their website they can check for themselves if its correct" how would anyone know what Rate 1A even means or know to check a website....so dishonest smh
Honestly I’m surprised. Most power companies have monopolies for areas where there is only one power company option. Surprisingly they offered 11 years when only required to do 1 year. Would NOT happen in Louisiana.
These companies know we can’t do much about it. I was on budget billing with Atmos Energy I paid my bill on time each month once the one year hit all those “ discounts” I had received I had to pay my bill was 700 I let it get cut off about two weeks later I received a letter stating they had overcharged me and credited me 765 back 65 for the reconnect fees i have no choice but to continue using the company bc their the only ones in my area
I hope you notified the local utility commission in your area about it. They may not know about it unless you tell them. These sorts of things come up against them in regulation hearings.
there is a really fast way to figure out the total amount this lady should have paid versus what she was charge and the different she is owed. and the way to do it is to take all the bills and add up the total amount of wattage. after that add up all the bills she has this is the first figure. than find out the total amount per KW it would cost her. take the total amount that she should have been charged and subtract it from what she has been charged and that is the amount the electric company owes her.
This is what I HATE about the FREAKING news media. Why on earth did this woman have to refer to the women's home as "modest". Just say the woman's house/home and leave it at that. And they're going to say it describes the size of the home which again, has zero to do with the story.
I bet if they incorrectly billed a corporation as a residence for 16 years they'd bill for it. Immediately. They'd probably even send the account to collections if it is unpaid for 7 months.
The rules aren't any different for corporations. Even in deregulated utilities, there's going to be rules set in place for billing correctly. They could always sue them though. 🤷🏻♀️
She runs a business out of the building and bought it as a place for business, just because you decided to live in your business doesnt mean your not a business
I think the company did not act fast enough however they did the right thing in the end which is commendable and hopefully if anyone else corrects their rates in the future things will go more smoothly.
Most utility companies just estimate. When I rented an apartment in LA I had an attached garage. I kept getting outrageous bills cuz at the time and me and my wife were never even home on the weekends. Then I finally realized they were estimating the bill. the renter before me was running a shop out of his garage using his air compressor all the time! They only lowered the bill and never even gave us a refund for the amount they ripped us off.
Watching videos about the corruption in New Mexico is very depressing. Then I realize that this is not only a problem in New Mexico. The American taxpayer is being fleeced by every part of the bureaucracy.
I use $ 60 dollars of electricity a month and the rest of the bill is line charges , paying for winter service and charges for poor people . Funny thing is that the extra charges are bigger than what I actually use !
So they fucked up. They take "longer than they should have." Do they even consider the inconvenience? How about the interests on the extra money sent to the company? 2300 dollars? Sue them. Sue them for at least 100k.
The exact same thing happened to me only i caught it in 3 yrs. It was a commercial meter at my apt. I was hardly home but i was always like wtf. When i went to the BBB they told ME i was SOL they also went ahead and charged me my sisters bill because shes my sister and left without paying. I was told it was legal, literally paid 2k in bill from her, my question was how the fuck did you let her get to 2k when i keep getting diaconnected every month because i gotta pay, her bill, my bill, and the late fees. Worst part I CANNOT change electricity providers because they have a monopoly here
You need to be calling your local utility regulation commission. Being billed for someone else's usage is not legal. The company can get in lot of trouble for doing things like that. The BBB wouldn't know. The regulation commission (referred to as PUC or Public Utility Commission here) sets rates, hears complaints, and can fine companies for screwing over customers.
I am amazed by how many people don't know what they are paying per kilowatt -hour! Deregulated in abilene we were paying right at 50 cents per kwh which is exorbitant! Folks were paying more for electric each month than their monthly mortgage payment! Electricity was being cut off each month and this was happening in the exclusive area of town. I got a huge bill one time and called them. They pretty much told me tough! That's deregulation for you. I told them maybe you're going to charge high rates, but I ultimately decide how much I will use. I swapped all of my incandescent bulbs for fluorescent, and monitored my meter and never went over 300 kwh per month! I'm now in an area where electric isn't deregulated and I pay around 8 cents per kwh. I still use fluorescent bulbs, but my electric rarely goes over 58 dollars even in the summer. Deregulation is a bad thing, folks, and don't let someone tell you otherwise. If they do, they're LYING!!!!
