News10NBC Investigates: 7k RG&E bill turns into 8k bill credit which turns into a shut-off notice

Jennifer Lewke News10NBC

[anvplayer video=”5161363″ station=”998131″]

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Over the course of the last year, News10NBC has told the stories of dozens of RG&E customers who have faced serious billing and customer service issues but the situation a young Pittsford family has been facing since December, might take the cake. 

Adryan Nesser and his wife are new parents which means life is very busy so, they auto-pay most of their bills, “my wife and I, we are RG&E’s perfect customers, we were on auto-pay, we were about to switch to clean energy, we pay our bills in full every month,” Nesser tells News10NBC. 

In December, when they logged on to take a look at their account, they saw a balance due of more than $7,000, “we just figured it had to be an error right? They would never charge me $7,000 for a gas and electric bill and then one morning, I think it was the morning of the 28th so, a few days after Christmas, I got a notice from my bank saying my account had been overdrawn for the first time in my life,” Nesser recalls. 

RG&E had deduced the full $7,100 balance.  It took several calls and several hours on the phone to get through to customer service and then “when I called they said, “well, you know your energy bill goes up in the winter right?” Nesser recalls. He was finally able to get to a supervisor, “and then they finally said well, actually not only do we owe you that money back, we’ve actually been over-charging you for two years so not only do we give you back that $7,100, we actually owe you a check for $7,900,” he says.

RG&E cut a paper check and mailed it to the family.  When they received it, they called RG&E to double-check that the utility had double-checked its math, “I wanted to make sure that everything was taken care of and this was actually correct before I cashed the check,” Nasser says, “she assured me that not only were we not responsible for paying the $7,100 they originally deducted from our bank account but in fact, the $7,900 credit was accurate.”

So, the Nasser’s cashed the check and decided to use the money to pay off their car.  “Not even two days later, I got a call from the same supervisor saying that she had a made a mistake, RG&E made a mistake…They actually only owed us a credit of $700 not $7,900 and that we would now be responsible for paying back the $7,100,” he says. 

Panicked, Nasser told her it was too late, “If I had just received it and they called me and said they made a mistake I would have shredded the check, recycled it and waited for a new check, the last thing my wife and I want with a newborn is a battle with RG&E,” he says. 

That’s exactly what the Nassers have on their hands.  RG&E is now threatening to shut-off power to the home if they don’t pay back the money this months but if you log into their online account, it now shows a credit of more than $10,000!

“All we want is for this to be resolved so we can just move on and focus on being new parents for the first time,” Nasser says

News10NBC Investigative Reporter Jennifer Lewke passed along the Nasser’s account information and bills to the Office of the President at RG&E.  A spokeswoman for the utility said while she could not discuss the details of an individual account, RG&E was going to “make the situation right” with the Nasser family.

More about billing issues with RG&E: