National Grid customer slammed with sky-high bill. He’s not the only one.

Imagine you get your National Grid bill, and it is usually between $30 to $40 this time of year. However, when you open this time, it’s over $600. That is what happened to Raymond Peter, and he was stunned.

He first thought, “What the heck happened?”

Then, he started looking at the breakdown of the bill and noticed his gas usage meter was off the charts.

On Peter’s bill, it said the gas usage therms, that’s a unit of heat, were 11.4. That is 40 times higher than normal.

He suspected a gas leak, so he took apart his gas fireplace and smelled for gas. He smelled nothing. Then he checked the pipes outside and, again, everything seemed okay.

Unfortunately, Peter opened his gigantic bill on a Sunday and could not reach anyone at National Grid; leading to a very sleepless night.

“I kind of went to bed that night thinking, ‘I hope we don’t blow up.’ the next Monday morning I called National Grid and the woman said to me, ‘Oh yeah, there was a discrepancy when we electronically read the meters. You and some 3,000 other people got bills that were way out of whack,” Peter said.

13 Investigates contacted National Grid. They declined an on-camera interview. Instead, they sent this statement:

“This was a billing error that occurred several weeks to go to about 3,000 upstate New York gas customers. National Grid sends 1.6 million bills to customers every month, or about 15.6 million bills every year. From time to time billing errors occur, but National Grid has an excellent track record of correcting those errors quickly. In this case, National Grid found the error before most of these customers had received the incorrect bill.

“The error was caused by a supply cost miscalculation on the bill, not through the meter. Within days, National Grid sent notification to these customers that they had received an incorrect bill and then sent revised bills with the correct amount.

“Customers who have their bill automatically deducted from their bank account never had the incorrect bill amount taken from their account. The corrected amount was deducted a couple of days after the error was detected.”

Peter’s actual bill came out to about $35.

However, Peter said he found out about the issue after he called the company to ask what was up.

“You would think that with usage like this, it would have thrown a flag someplace so somebody would have asked. I had to discover it myself.”

When Peter called National Grid about his outrageous bill, he said the company would send his adjusted bill and a letter of explanation.

Peter said he got the bill, but is still waiting on the letter.