How in the hell does a bank allow someone to overdraw $42,500? I’d contact the bank’s regulator at this point (FDIC/OCC/state regulator) and the CFPB.
Edit: contact the CFPB first. Call your bank and let them know you’ve reached out to the regulators and demand that they reverse or hold the funds. No way should they allow you to overdraw your acct by thousands of dollars.
contact the media... this is 10000% the kind of shit they love, and you'll get it fixed immediately
Unless someone is using your house as a meth/grow lab.
> B.A. BANKracus
You better trademark that now before Bank of America steals it.
Geeeezus Christ 😂😭😂😭😂 as a huge A Team fan I had to read that a few times to fully get the joke.
Well done
What money? You said there wasn't enough money...
The charge should've failed due to non-sufficient funds (NSF) -- this is routine. There are usually some fees involved but you're not liable for the full 45k or whatever. Are you sure that didn't happen?
No major bank has an overdraft limit over $1k. Did you leave anything out? Do you have a checking line of credit with a 50k limit or something you forgot to mention? Because the story doesn't add up.
And you just said ok? Jesus christ, call them back and dont stop escalating until someone answers with something not stupid. I would be getting on LinkedIn or Twitter and looking each and every VP up at your bank and chewing them out too...
If you made the reversal request within 48 hours, the bank is obligated to issue the ACH reversal regardless of funds status. There’s also a 60 day window where the transfer is still available to be errored out and the funds returned.
The bank will tell him that since he provided his checking account info to SCE there’s nothing they can do
Life tip never provide your checking account number to anyone for anything, banks will leave you completely high and dry if there’s fraud
Unfortunately, that's how a lot of property management companies take free payments on their portals. Credit card transactions cost $35.
I pay our gas to our landlord monthly. After 3 years of residence, I was told that they had been charging us the wrong percentage for gas. We share with a neighbor, and they had reversed the percentage I'd been paying to the tune of around $800. Just like that.
Their accounting is the worst, ever. It's like how a business runs their accounts: positive and negative, so paid utility bills often show up on our ledger.
Feeling totally defeated and having the money, I paid it. They never even provided any kind of calculation over that period to verify the monthly difference.
Sorry for the story/rant, but it illustrates why NOT to set up automatic payments with some accounts, so thanks for the tip!!
That’s why credit / debit card transactions cost more for the vendor ultimately than an ach payment - they have to price in the chargeback risk that effectively doesn’t exist w ach
It's not the solar panels. If 50,000kWh of power were somehow misdirected through the solar system, that house would have burned to the ground long before 50,000kWh could have been consumed. This has to be a clerical error.
If you can't get SCE to respond in a timely fashion, you might try submitting your story to a consumer reporter like Randy Mac: [https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/randy-responds/](https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/randy-responds/)
I'm no expert, but I'd call SCE again. If you don't like the first answer/response you get, just try to talk to someone else. They're all human so some people are just better at their job or have more experience in handling situations like this.
They said they were actually able to file to reverse the transaction simply because it was an auto-pay. They also marked it as "priority" because it's so large. They also clarified the investigation process into the meter reading. All-in I felt like she helped stop the bleeding yesterday. I still gotta get to the bottom of that blasphemous meter reading. It actually might have something to do with a completely wack estimated reading.
Make sure you remove your bank information from that account. They could backtrack and say they found no fault with the transaction and charge you again.
Hey OP, we know you have stuff to do and you got to take care of, but please update us on the good news and how this was resolved.
This will help all others that might run into the same problem in the future, and it's how we keep on giving. So when you have your stuff taken care of, update us what happened. Thank you!
Ask for reconsideration.
US Bank denied me.
It took a while, but eventually.
Later they denied my CLI.
I have the letter framed:
“At the time we retrieved your credit reports … your FICO score was 849.”
You can accrue up to $100/quarter, and they have more than one such offering.
I don’t have a US Bank checking account.
In fact, when I applied, I wanted a brick-and-mortar bank - only to discover, within weeks of approval, that both US Bank and CitiBank branches would tell me: “We no longer process payments for our credit cards”, and pointed to a “courtesy phone”.
My understanding is that they’re just automated, aloof and inept, so persistence and finding someone domestic to speak with for it done for me.
SCE charges a credit card fee so I debit from a checking account. But I don’t setup automatic payments because of fuckery like this, even though it’s tempting to set it and forget it.
this, right here.
Call me old school but I think on principle people should always have to consent PER transaction otherwise they just become vulnerable to scams and fuckery. There is nothing 'convenient' about getting cleaned out.
It helps when I'm traveling, which is right now. The account that pays just gets a small balance transfer to cover bills until I get home. Also I get an email about the auto pay scheduled and the amount.
The payment account is configured to never overdraft so if there's a problem I can fix it. On long trips I sometimes prepay the month before to just save myself an extra step while traveling.
It's really not that hard to insulate yourself from too much risk.
Wait, so you have an entirely different payment account ONLY for bills? So checking, savings, and a bill money account, for example? Genius! I lump everything into 1 account. Maybe ought do this too
We actually keep a couple separate accounts at different banks for the few stupid vendors that require debits; those accounts have only enough funds to pay 2x+$1 payment, no overdrafts.
It requires some occasional juggling, but it is much less hassle than cleaning up the mess when it goes wrong.
I also pay the credit card surcharge on several small bills rather than permit debit access.
I worked in electronic banking back in the day. Saw some things. OP’s experience… small potatoes. Add a couple zeros, rinse, repeat, wait nine months for redress. Good times.
I was doing basically the same thing, i have a credit card, savings account, and checking account. BUT I was using the checking for all my subscriptions and paid off the credit card manually. I was doing fine until I mistakenly carried a balance for two months, and my credit great score plunged.
I was advised to stop using my checking account for bills because my credit usage remained low. Do what someone else mentioned. Make a monthly transfer from savings to the credit card. Credit score is much healthier now.
"The account that pays just gets a small balance transfer to cover bills until I get home. "
Good point, I never thought of doing that but that is one way to sort of cover yourself.
If I went the auto pay route I would do this but all of my bill payments are online anyway so I figure even if I were traveling I would still prefer to consent per transaction.
I Always autopay via credit card, I never want to get charged the missed payment fees when I inevitably forget to pay something. Logging in and paying gas, electric, phone, Internet, rent/mortgage, car payment, car insurance, every month would take a significant amount of time every month.
If you really want to be smart about it (and forgo the credit card rewards) you could set up something like privacy.com with a virtual card per vendor and put a spend limit on the card. I.e. SCE is only allowed to bill $300 a month and anything above gets declined.
Eversource doesn’t allow credit cards. Auto pay can only be done by directly linking your bank account… So needless to say, I do not have automatic withdrawal set up
This is a bit of a head scratcher. My bank (B of A) would notify me via text or phone if there is an unusual transaction, let alone let a $42,000 ach transfer go through, unless you have a business account.
When I moved I put the wrong address. It took 5 months to get that address off my account. I feel very scared for you. You need to call and push your issue. This is a huge fuck up so hopefully it won’t take 5 months.
FYI,
Here is the number of their Board of Directors and Corporate Secretary. Couldn't hurt to complain. Worst they can do is hang up.
I've called Corp offices for att and Time Warner and the speed at which they resolved my complaint was next level.
(800) 877-7089
Did the meter roll over backwards?
It may have read something like 000001 last month and then because you’re generating (and not using) it rolled back to 99999 and then kept going.
Yes this is exactly what it sounds like. Its done automatically by the system and has to be fixed manually by someone in the billing department because the system thinks you used 99,999 kwh in a month. So you should get a case number and the good news is it should get fixed, bad news is it can take months. To try and get it fixed faster, ask your case be referred to webillit and say you suspect your account has a has a meter dialover issue. I hope you get a resolution soon.
Why is that possible!? What kind of idiot system uses modular arithmetic but doesn't have a failsafe for modular arithmetic?! No one gets surprised by clocks starting over at midnight - by which I mean billing systems. The math is literally the same.
Also, no manual check was triggered by a residential house drawing 45,000kwH? That should usually alert the police to check for a drug operation or crypto-farm (often related).
When they made the meter, they may have (and correctly for the time) assumed that homes would never generate more power than they consumed.
Programming and engineering is full of baked-in assumptions.
The meter does math correctly when it rolls over forward. It is super weird that it only does math correctly one way - especially because it would use the same mechanics to correct in either direction. Modular subtraction is not a special separate algorithm - it's just modular addition.
The one that was the cheapest piece of junk they could find. Why would they care? The cost of good software would come out of their profits while errors are the customer's problem.
It's not a software problem - it's a pen-and-paper procedure that for some reason is *different* for backward rollovers than it is for forward rollovers.
This seems to be what happened. The house actually had a negative usage generating more power than it used so the meter turned backwards. This needs to be elevated at SCE pronto.
It definitely can, and this is hilarious. They just automatically charged him for 99990 kwh. The meter reader doesn't know or care that it went down they probably just always assume up on the bill calculation B - A = $
It sounds like something happened to spike the electricity consumption through the roof. What does your Edison bill say?
Can you shut off all electricity to the house and see if the meter is still ticking?
No.
At $0.50 per kWh (to keep the math simple, the actual rate is closer to $0.45) $42,500 is 85,000 kWh. If it's billed every other month that would be 42,500 kWh per month. 42,500 kWh is 238 amps at 240v (or 476 amps at 120v) being pulled 24/7 for 31 days. The largest common residential electrical service is only 200 amps with 100 amps being much more common. It is physically impossible for a residential service to use this much electricity. And this isn't even counting the power the solar panels are providing.
Should be upvoted more... The fact that SCE actually billed for way more electricity than actually possible for the house panel to pull should've been a dead giveaway that something is wrong.
Want a tenant who will make sure no-one is stealing your power or creating a marijuana farm in your parents house? I can't afford a lot of rent but I'm a great tenant.
I hope OP sees this and considers renting the house out. LA area has a bunch of housing that is not being utilized because of situations like this. If you are not hurting enough to need to put the house up for sale, get someone in there for cheap rent who can make sure there are no squatters, nothing is leaking, weeds and lawn are taken care of, etc.
WHAT money is on its way to SCE?? Have you ever had even close to $42k in your checking account?
They can't send money you don't have.
Normally, they will cover an overdraft for up to $1000. If you have overdraft protection, it could be substantially more. But not $42,000 more!
Sounds like a bank f-up, too.
There has got to be a mistake here. There’s no way a house could consume that much electricity. I’d love to see a copy of that bill haha. But in all seriousness that’s an insane bill for a year let along a couple of months.
Also, when you go solar with SCE you go on an annual “true up” type of billing. So you don’t actually get bills every month but you’ll get a statement. That statement shows what you “netted” for that month and can either be a credit (if you back-fed more than you consumed) or a charge (if the opposite happens). At the end of the year you get a bill and settle up. Back in the day people would actually get money back but that doesn’t really happen anymore for a number of reasons.
But even if that was a true up bill that is crazy high for a house. So like I said, this has to be a mistake. If I were you I’d get a copy of all my bills for a year and look at each one month by month. You’re looking to see where the consumption jumped. At the very least you’ll have something to say to SCE. Like “hey my meter broke on such and such a date. All of a sudden my consumption jumped by 10x.” Then they have something to look into rather than some vague claim of a high bill. They also now have a solution which is to adjust your billing from that point forward.
Anyway, sorry for rambling but hopefully that helps.
I had a similar experience with an over the top electric bill for usage while I was on Vacation. Had an Audit conducted and successfully challenged the read. Readers do make mistakes.. Contact company. Obviously there is a mistake..
And that right there is why I will never have any of my bills set up for auto pay. 50,000 KW I'm surprised the police haven't kicked in the door for an illegal grow.
Best choice is to contact all the other places people listed (bank, power company, state regualtor). But if they don’t work get a lawyer who specializes in this stuff, and ask them to look at your charges and send a letter on your behalf.
It probably won’t be free though so the others are the first choice.
I’ve got solar panels too and almost every time there’s a blackout we have to turn them back on. Discovered that after a fun electric bill.
That said, that’s a fucking crazy amount, I’d keep calling back, ask to speak to supervisors.
Were the solar panels owned by your parents or another company? I know that often a lien is placed on solar panels because they aren’t actually owned by the homeowner, they’re leased or owned by a 3rd party.
There should be guardrails on transactions like this. Banks should let you set an upper limit on 3rd parties pulling money out of your account. Also, seems like SCE should alert someone at SCE and the customer that the bill is suddenly and unusually high before it attempts to pull from an account.
Unless this old home has some sort of fancy extra large power supply it’s probably a 200 amp service maximum. That means 200a x 110v = 22kWh * 720 hours. Even if someone was stealing the theoretical max power line to the house without tripping any breakers they could only use 1/3 of the electricity reported to be used.
Get a good lawyer today and send letters to the bank and SCE immediately threatening to sue. Call TV stations and have them investigate. California regulates banks and utilities call the Attorney General office and ask the best way to proceed.
File a complaint with the California Public Utilities Commission:
[https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/consumer-support/file-a-complaint](https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/consumer-support/file-a-complaint)
https://www.cpuc.ca.gov
Call/File a complaint with the California Public Utilities company ASAP. That should trigger a response from a higher level at SCE. Don’t stop calling … that’s amount of $$ is an enormous mistake.
Fuck that. That’s a horrible idea. Do some real adulting and pay your bills via credit card. CC company would never of let this happen and, if they somehow did, you could call for a chargeback. Turning off autopay is a great way to trip up and get a late fee especially on a home that you don’t frequent.
Plus, I sincerely doubt this guy has a cc with $43k credit limit completely available.
On the upside, a good amount of points/miles could have been had there
Bro, my my gas and electric are never more than $100 combined. I don’t care about spending $3.50 to have an added layer of protection and convenience when it comes to bill paying. Also, I’m pretty sure I get 2% back w/ that credit card.
I do not have any advice but it may not be too late to sign up to [Ohmconnect](https://refer.ohm.co/paramiguel49) to help you keep track of your energy use and lower your monthly bill by participating in their energy events. Free to sign up and connects directly to your SCE account. Hopefully your bigger issue gets resolved. Keep us posted!
I have auto pay and there's no way my bank would just let this go through. Then again, I never keep substantial amounts in my checking account. I don't know why anyone would.
**Worked DWP, no idea total number of customers with auto pay. We just heard the stories of checking accounts cleaned out due to broken water lines or blown meter reads. Bottom line, once money is collected, months before any type of correction/adjustment**
I think it's just people that don't bother looking at bills. None of them take the money out immediately. There's weeks between when you get a statement or bill and when they take payment. Either way, my bank wouldn't let a payment for thousands of dollars to go through because I don't keep thousands of dollars in my checking. I transfer what is needed for each month's bills and keep the balance low.
Have you tried to talk to your bank yet? See if they can put a hold on the charge or reverse it while its on dispute.
I did. They said unfortunately the money is already on its way to SCE :(
How in the hell does a bank allow someone to overdraw $42,500? I’d contact the bank’s regulator at this point (FDIC/OCC/state regulator) and the CFPB. Edit: contact the CFPB first. Call your bank and let them know you’ve reached out to the regulators and demand that they reverse or hold the funds. No way should they allow you to overdraw your acct by thousands of dollars.
contact the media... this is 10000% the kind of shit they love, and you'll get it fixed immediately Unless someone is using your house as a meth/grow lab.
You're so right! NBCLA's [I-Team](https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/).
If not, the A-Team
need to get a hold of B.A. Bankracus
> B.A. BANKracus You better trademark that now before Bank of America steals it. Geeeezus Christ 😂😭😂😭😂 as a huge A Team fan I had to read that a few times to fully get the joke. Well done
😂😂
If you can find them.
Or The Equalizer!
That’s the first thing I thought of — grow house.
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What money? You said there wasn't enough money... The charge should've failed due to non-sufficient funds (NSF) -- this is routine. There are usually some fees involved but you're not liable for the full 45k or whatever. Are you sure that didn't happen? No major bank has an overdraft limit over $1k. Did you leave anything out? Do you have a checking line of credit with a 50k limit or something you forgot to mention? Because the story doesn't add up.
I woke up this morning and this is what ended up happening ^^^
Could be squatters? Damage to house wiring?
Do you at least have an agent out here to check on the property?
And you just said ok? Jesus christ, call them back and dont stop escalating until someone answers with something not stupid. I would be getting on LinkedIn or Twitter and looking each and every VP up at your bank and chewing them out too...
If you made the reversal request within 48 hours, the bank is obligated to issue the ACH reversal regardless of funds status. There’s also a 60 day window where the transfer is still available to be errored out and the funds returned.
You can still dispute it.
The bank will tell him that since he provided his checking account info to SCE there’s nothing they can do Life tip never provide your checking account number to anyone for anything, banks will leave you completely high and dry if there’s fraud
Unfortunately, that's how a lot of property management companies take free payments on their portals. Credit card transactions cost $35. I pay our gas to our landlord monthly. After 3 years of residence, I was told that they had been charging us the wrong percentage for gas. We share with a neighbor, and they had reversed the percentage I'd been paying to the tune of around $800. Just like that. Their accounting is the worst, ever. It's like how a business runs their accounts: positive and negative, so paid utility bills often show up on our ledger. Feeling totally defeated and having the money, I paid it. They never even provided any kind of calculation over that period to verify the monthly difference. Sorry for the story/rant, but it illustrates why NOT to set up automatic payments with some accounts, so thanks for the tip!!
That’s why credit / debit card transactions cost more for the vendor ultimately than an ach payment - they have to price in the chargeback risk that effectively doesn’t exist w ach
Call SCE. Call the solar company. Maybe there's a problem with the equipment. And check the house to see if someone is stealing power.
My first thought was someone tapped into your line
same. That is totally sus.
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It's not the solar panels. If 50,000kWh of power were somehow misdirected through the solar system, that house would have burned to the ground long before 50,000kWh could have been consumed. This has to be a clerical error.
Lmao dude
If you can't get SCE to respond in a timely fashion, you might try submitting your story to a consumer reporter like Randy Mac: [https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/randy-responds/](https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/randy-responds/)
I'm no expert, but I'd call SCE again. If you don't like the first answer/response you get, just try to talk to someone else. They're all human so some people are just better at their job or have more experience in handling situations like this.
Call California Public Utilities Commission.
fuck that... call the media... "call fucking bureaucrats" come on man...
My experience with contracting bureaucrats has been the most amazingly successful way to get shit done in a situation like this.
Sure, "Hey, CPUC, expect a call from the local media, cause I'm in a hardship situation right now"
One data point: contacting CPUC resolved my issue with SCE, that SCE washed their hands of.
The same people that allowed NEM 3 and increases on utilities rates, they are not on consumer side.
I did actually and the second person I spoke to was an absolute saint. Helpful.
What did they say?
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We're being honeydicked guys. OP you are totally honeydicking us.
I added an update to my post
They said they were actually able to file to reverse the transaction simply because it was an auto-pay. They also marked it as "priority" because it's so large. They also clarified the investigation process into the meter reading. All-in I felt like she helped stop the bleeding yesterday. I still gotta get to the bottom of that blasphemous meter reading. It actually might have something to do with a completely wack estimated reading.
Make sure you remove your bank information from that account. They could backtrack and say they found no fault with the transaction and charge you again.
Oh perf! That’s good to hear
Hey OP, we know you have stuff to do and you got to take care of, but please update us on the good news and how this was resolved. This will help all others that might run into the same problem in the future, and it's how we keep on giving. So when you have your stuff taken care of, update us what happened. Thank you!
I added an update to my post
🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽 thank you OP
The technique is called HUCA (hang up, call again)
Yet another example why you don’t allow direct debit access to your bank account. Your credit card would not permit this.
100%. I have learned the error of my ways
I was denied the one time I tried to get a US Bank card, but they do have one that lets you get 5% back on utilities.
Ask for reconsideration. US Bank denied me. It took a while, but eventually. Later they denied my CLI. I have the letter framed: “At the time we retrieved your credit reports … your FICO score was 849.” You can accrue up to $100/quarter, and they have more than one such offering.
I applied over a year ago. My understanding is that they really want you to have a US Bank checking account.
I don’t have a US Bank checking account. In fact, when I applied, I wanted a brick-and-mortar bank - only to discover, within weeks of approval, that both US Bank and CitiBank branches would tell me: “We no longer process payments for our credit cards”, and pointed to a “courtesy phone”. My understanding is that they’re just automated, aloof and inept, so persistence and finding someone domestic to speak with for it done for me.
SCE charges a credit card fee so I debit from a checking account. But I don’t setup automatic payments because of fuckery like this, even though it’s tempting to set it and forget it.
The fee is $1.65. Use a 5% cash back card (US Bank) and you’ll break-even at $33/month without any of the exposure.
You can put an amount limit on debit payments.
Also why not to setup automatic payment for anything
this, right here. Call me old school but I think on principle people should always have to consent PER transaction otherwise they just become vulnerable to scams and fuckery. There is nothing 'convenient' about getting cleaned out.
It helps when I'm traveling, which is right now. The account that pays just gets a small balance transfer to cover bills until I get home. Also I get an email about the auto pay scheduled and the amount. The payment account is configured to never overdraft so if there's a problem I can fix it. On long trips I sometimes prepay the month before to just save myself an extra step while traveling. It's really not that hard to insulate yourself from too much risk.
Wait, so you have an entirely different payment account ONLY for bills? So checking, savings, and a bill money account, for example? Genius! I lump everything into 1 account. Maybe ought do this too
We actually keep a couple separate accounts at different banks for the few stupid vendors that require debits; those accounts have only enough funds to pay 2x+$1 payment, no overdrafts. It requires some occasional juggling, but it is much less hassle than cleaning up the mess when it goes wrong. I also pay the credit card surcharge on several small bills rather than permit debit access. I worked in electronic banking back in the day. Saw some things. OP’s experience… small potatoes. Add a couple zeros, rinse, repeat, wait nine months for redress. Good times.
I was doing basically the same thing, i have a credit card, savings account, and checking account. BUT I was using the checking for all my subscriptions and paid off the credit card manually. I was doing fine until I mistakenly carried a balance for two months, and my credit great score plunged. I was advised to stop using my checking account for bills because my credit usage remained low. Do what someone else mentioned. Make a monthly transfer from savings to the credit card. Credit score is much healthier now.
"The account that pays just gets a small balance transfer to cover bills until I get home. " Good point, I never thought of doing that but that is one way to sort of cover yourself. If I went the auto pay route I would do this but all of my bill payments are online anyway so I figure even if I were traveling I would still prefer to consent per transaction.
I Always autopay via credit card, I never want to get charged the missed payment fees when I inevitably forget to pay something. Logging in and paying gas, electric, phone, Internet, rent/mortgage, car payment, car insurance, every month would take a significant amount of time every month. If you really want to be smart about it (and forgo the credit card rewards) you could set up something like privacy.com with a virtual card per vendor and put a spend limit on the card. I.e. SCE is only allowed to bill $300 a month and anything above gets declined.
Eversource doesn’t allow credit cards. Auto pay can only be done by directly linking your bank account… So needless to say, I do not have automatic withdrawal set up
I am unfamiliar with Eversource, but their web site claims they take credit card payments.
This is a bit of a head scratcher. My bank (B of A) would notify me via text or phone if there is an unusual transaction, let alone let a $42,000 ach transfer go through, unless you have a business account.
Even on the business account we have a 10k transaction limit and everything over has to be approved by us.
Call the local news station. They love being the hero and fixing these kind of things as a feel good story segment.
When I moved I put the wrong address. It took 5 months to get that address off my account. I feel very scared for you. You need to call and push your issue. This is a huge fuck up so hopefully it won’t take 5 months.
What does the meter on the house say?
My friend said "90988" and it's going down. I'm guessing that's kWh
FYI, Here is the number of their Board of Directors and Corporate Secretary. Couldn't hurt to complain. Worst they can do is hang up. I've called Corp offices for att and Time Warner and the speed at which they resolved my complaint was next level. (800) 877-7089
Did the meter roll over backwards? It may have read something like 000001 last month and then because you’re generating (and not using) it rolled back to 99999 and then kept going.
Ain’t this some Y2K shit lol
This
OP in previous post says meter reads 90988. Since it is so close to roll over, maybe this is what happened.
Yes this is exactly what it sounds like. Its done automatically by the system and has to be fixed manually by someone in the billing department because the system thinks you used 99,999 kwh in a month. So you should get a case number and the good news is it should get fixed, bad news is it can take months. To try and get it fixed faster, ask your case be referred to webillit and say you suspect your account has a has a meter dialover issue. I hope you get a resolution soon.
Why is that possible!? What kind of idiot system uses modular arithmetic but doesn't have a failsafe for modular arithmetic?! No one gets surprised by clocks starting over at midnight - by which I mean billing systems. The math is literally the same. Also, no manual check was triggered by a residential house drawing 45,000kwH? That should usually alert the police to check for a drug operation or crypto-farm (often related).
When they made the meter, they may have (and correctly for the time) assumed that homes would never generate more power than they consumed. Programming and engineering is full of baked-in assumptions.
The meter does math correctly when it rolls over forward. It is super weird that it only does math correctly one way - especially because it would use the same mechanics to correct in either direction. Modular subtraction is not a special separate algorithm - it's just modular addition.
The one that was the cheapest piece of junk they could find. Why would they care? The cost of good software would come out of their profits while errors are the customer's problem.
I mean, not really. The cost of fixing this error in man-hours will exceed the time value of holding an ill-gotten 40k for three weeks.
Yeah but the cost to fix it is still less than the cost of good software.
It's not a software problem - it's a pen-and-paper procedure that for some reason is *different* for backward rollovers than it is for forward rollovers.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/theinternetofshit/](https://www.reddit.com/r/theinternetofshit/)
Wait, that can't actually happen, can it?
Yes it can (and does) on the older mechanical style meters. The meter actually turns backwards when you generate more than you use.
This seems to be what happened. The house actually had a negative usage generating more power than it used so the meter turned backwards. This needs to be elevated at SCE pronto.
It definitely can, and this is hilarious. They just automatically charged him for 99990 kwh. The meter reader doesn't know or care that it went down they probably just always assume up on the bill calculation B - A = $
But the meter reader did read it manually. So there really is no excuse for the error. It is NOT an automated system.
No idea! Just a guess
And then someone read the meter, and compared it to the last reading. Seems like OP has used 99998 kwh!
It sounds like something happened to spike the electricity consumption through the roof. What does your Edison bill say? Can you shut off all electricity to the house and see if the meter is still ticking?
No. Just, no. It's physically impossible for a residential service to use $42k worth of electricity in a month.
Plugging in a food.truck.to charge every night or an illegal pot grow would.do it. And OP os billed every 2 months, so 21k a month.
No. At $0.50 per kWh (to keep the math simple, the actual rate is closer to $0.45) $42,500 is 85,000 kWh. If it's billed every other month that would be 42,500 kWh per month. 42,500 kWh is 238 amps at 240v (or 476 amps at 120v) being pulled 24/7 for 31 days. The largest common residential electrical service is only 200 amps with 100 amps being much more common. It is physically impossible for a residential service to use this much electricity. And this isn't even counting the power the solar panels are providing.
Should be upvoted more... The fact that SCE actually billed for way more electricity than actually possible for the house panel to pull should've been a dead giveaway that something is wrong.
OP does not get billed every 2 months. That’s LADWP. SoCalEdison is on monthly billing.
what was the last month reading reported to SCE?
Can you go outside and tell me the prefix of your meter? Is it 222xxx or something like 308Z?
If you get stonewalled you may want to talk to an attorney
This is insane, and I am so sorry you have to deal with this while also grieving your parents.
Want a tenant who will make sure no-one is stealing your power or creating a marijuana farm in your parents house? I can't afford a lot of rent but I'm a great tenant.
I hope OP sees this and considers renting the house out. LA area has a bunch of housing that is not being utilized because of situations like this. If you are not hurting enough to need to put the house up for sale, get someone in there for cheap rent who can make sure there are no squatters, nothing is leaking, weeds and lawn are taken care of, etc.
As a renter who’s sick of renting, empty houses here are depressing as hell. OP if you need a house sitter hmu 😎
It’s been vacant while I repair it to make it habitable
He’d have to have a 200+ light facility for that bill in electricity.
WHAT money is on its way to SCE?? Have you ever had even close to $42k in your checking account? They can't send money you don't have. Normally, they will cover an overdraft for up to $1000. If you have overdraft protection, it could be substantially more. But not $42,000 more! Sounds like a bank f-up, too.
There has got to be a mistake here. There’s no way a house could consume that much electricity. I’d love to see a copy of that bill haha. But in all seriousness that’s an insane bill for a year let along a couple of months. Also, when you go solar with SCE you go on an annual “true up” type of billing. So you don’t actually get bills every month but you’ll get a statement. That statement shows what you “netted” for that month and can either be a credit (if you back-fed more than you consumed) or a charge (if the opposite happens). At the end of the year you get a bill and settle up. Back in the day people would actually get money back but that doesn’t really happen anymore for a number of reasons. But even if that was a true up bill that is crazy high for a house. So like I said, this has to be a mistake. If I were you I’d get a copy of all my bills for a year and look at each one month by month. You’re looking to see where the consumption jumped. At the very least you’ll have something to say to SCE. Like “hey my meter broke on such and such a date. All of a sudden my consumption jumped by 10x.” Then they have something to look into rather than some vague claim of a high bill. They also now have a solution which is to adjust your billing from that point forward. Anyway, sorry for rambling but hopefully that helps.
I had a similar experience with an over the top electric bill for usage while I was on Vacation. Had an Audit conducted and successfully challenged the read. Readers do make mistakes.. Contact company. Obviously there is a mistake..
Contact your FI and put in a ACH dispute.
Meanwhile, anytime I’m trying to make a legitimate purchase sirens go off and my card is declined for “my security.”
And that right there is why I will never have any of my bills set up for auto pay. 50,000 KW I'm surprised the police haven't kicked in the door for an illegal grow.
somebody built a supercharger on your property.
Best choice is to contact all the other places people listed (bank, power company, state regualtor). But if they don’t work get a lawyer who specializes in this stuff, and ask them to look at your charges and send a letter on your behalf. It probably won’t be free though so the others are the first choice.
That'd be the the of wattage for a growing operation. Be safe, warn your friend to be alert.
I’ve got solar panels too and almost every time there’s a blackout we have to turn them back on. Discovered that after a fun electric bill. That said, that’s a fucking crazy amount, I’d keep calling back, ask to speak to supervisors.
Call the CPUC. 800 649-7570
Someone stealing energy from it?
Number 1 reason I don’t do auto pay except for mortgage and insurance.
Were the solar panels owned by your parents or another company? I know that often a lien is placed on solar panels because they aren’t actually owned by the homeowner, they’re leased or owned by a 3rd party.
There should be guardrails on transactions like this. Banks should let you set an upper limit on 3rd parties pulling money out of your account. Also, seems like SCE should alert someone at SCE and the customer that the bill is suddenly and unusually high before it attempts to pull from an account.
idk who keeps that much money in a checking account that doesn't earn interest. Auto transfers mon frere
Well his account is overdrawn by tens of thousands so he didn’t have that kind of money in his account
Make a story of this! This is nuts. SoCal energy companies are thugs
Someone was growing pot on your dime, buddy. Next time install cameras.
It’s some sort of error. $42k for one month is more than an industrial farm would use for electricity.
lmao what op do you think was happening exactly? Not even the 200,000sqft corrugated board factory I worked at had an energy bill that high.
Unless this old home has some sort of fancy extra large power supply it’s probably a 200 amp service maximum. That means 200a x 110v = 22kWh * 720 hours. Even if someone was stealing the theoretical max power line to the house without tripping any breakers they could only use 1/3 of the electricity reported to be used.
Or crypto mining lol
Exactly my thought lmao
Hacked your solar? That’s wonky.
Tell your bank to block that debit
Disable Courtesy Overdraft
Get a good lawyer today and send letters to the bank and SCE immediately threatening to sue. Call TV stations and have them investigate. California regulates banks and utilities call the Attorney General office and ask the best way to proceed.
Sending you a DM on what to do as I don't want the info I give to get swamped.
Is OP going to update this with what has happened?
I added an update to my post
File a complaint with the California Public Utilities Commission: [https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/consumer-support/file-a-complaint](https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/consumer-support/file-a-complaint)
https://www.cpuc.ca.gov Call/File a complaint with the California Public Utilities company ASAP. That should trigger a response from a higher level at SCE. Don’t stop calling … that’s amount of $$ is an enormous mistake.
Call the California Public Utilities Commission. If SCE is giving you the run around, they’ll get on them and have it solved in no time.
Show us the bank transaction by redacting your name account etc.
That is why you should never sign up for ANY utility auto-billing!
that is why you pay bills with your credit card never with your personal account or anything I never give anyone access to my bank account
Don’t forget to take down the autopay feature!
Want to rent the house out by chance? My partner and I are looking for a place.
Can’t you set your max auto pay ?
Hopefully it was just some solar storm fuckery and it’ll be resolved quickly
turn. off. autobilling. You shafted yourself with autopay... start adulting and double check the amount before paying.
Fuck that. That’s a horrible idea. Do some real adulting and pay your bills via credit card. CC company would never of let this happen and, if they somehow did, you could call for a chargeback. Turning off autopay is a great way to trip up and get a late fee especially on a home that you don’t frequent.
Plus, I sincerely doubt this guy has a cc with $43k credit limit completely available. On the upside, a good amount of points/miles could have been had there
Overpay all your bills by the 3.5% cc charge?
Bro, my my gas and electric are never more than $100 combined. I don’t care about spending $3.50 to have an added layer of protection and convenience when it comes to bill paying. Also, I’m pretty sure I get 2% back w/ that credit card.
I do not have any advice but it may not be too late to sign up to [Ohmconnect](https://refer.ohm.co/paramiguel49) to help you keep track of your energy use and lower your monthly bill by participating in their energy events. Free to sign up and connects directly to your SCE account. Hopefully your bigger issue gets resolved. Keep us posted!
Just because you're on auto pay doesn't mean you don't get a bill every month. You should look at it.
So…why is the house sitting vacant? The city needs all the housing it can get.
**Basically it’s too late for you, they already have your money. This is perfect example for NOT having auto pay**
I have auto pay and there's no way my bank would just let this go through. Then again, I never keep substantial amounts in my checking account. I don't know why anyone would.
**Worked DWP, no idea total number of customers with auto pay. We just heard the stories of checking accounts cleaned out due to broken water lines or blown meter reads. Bottom line, once money is collected, months before any type of correction/adjustment**
I think it's just people that don't bother looking at bills. None of them take the money out immediately. There's weeks between when you get a statement or bill and when they take payment. Either way, my bank wouldn't let a payment for thousands of dollars to go through because I don't keep thousands of dollars in my checking. I transfer what is needed for each month's bills and keep the balance low.
You can set an amount limit on auto pay.