It is Illinois, she probably forgot to bribe someone.

I am in a similar situation now. Ever since we bought our condo our gas bills have been screwy. For the first 6 months living here I was getting a bill for $0!!

After contacting the gas company a bunch of times asking them to check it out.. I finally had to call our state utility control so that I COULD PAY THEM! insanity.

The other day I got a notice on my door stating that they wanted to replace the meter. Luckily Connecticut (i think anyways) has a law on the books that states they can only rebill you going back 8 months.

Ummm...how can she be held responsible for water usage when she didn't even live in the house? Isn't there some sort of statue of limitations on BS bills?

That'd have to be one hell of a leak in my book to cause that large of a bill. But the key is, why is her sewer portion so high as well? Was this just a clerical error?

Man, I hope she contact's Lisa Madigan's office. Even if billing her for the entire amount IS legal, it's damn bad policy and it's definitely unfair.

People will start including clauses about bad meter readings in home sales, or demanding meter readers make final checks at closing. It'll get insane.

(It looks like this is a city-owned utility? She might have less leverage than otherwise.)

@Eyebrows McGee: Also, I hope to one day learn how apostrophes work. :P

You mean apostrophe's? ;-)

Our gas meter broke and nobody would help us. Our bills were £200+ when they should have been a fraction. After much hassle and calling various numbers technician told us meters rarely ever break so if they put a test meter in they would charge us £35 if we were wrong.

Whatever! We said fine. Turns out it was wrong, running at 172% when legally in England it can only be running +/- 2% or so we have been told.

Needless to say, check around online or find out what your neighbours are paying. If you are above or below the average get it checked!

Seems fair that if it took the village 25 years to notice it then she should be able to pay it back over the same time frame.

I love the term "village"... I know there's some actual population distinction between a village, town, city, etc - but "village" always makes me think of people with pitchforks, thatched huts, and water meters of course.

@Ryan Gard: The sewer portion must be based on the water used, on the theory that it goes into the sewer - like ours is based.

Places with large pools/watering usage will have a seperate meter to subtract that amount from the sewage bill.

@Triborough: I chuckled at your comment Trib, but corruption isn't limited to IL.

This doesn't really sound like corruption, but more like a bureaucratic error. We have CUB (Citizen's Utility Board) to protect consumers in Illinois from Utility company BS.
[www.citizensutilityboard.org]

She needs to get in touch with this nonprofit organization.

There is no way there can be that large of a leak on property and they didn't know it when they installed the meter. They MUST be guessing how much was missed over the years. Fight it, complain to local utilities commssion.

@weakdome: I do as well. And then everyone living there are called village people, and I hope they break out in spontaneous choreographed dancing.

My water bill this quarter was $12.15.

@TheFuzz53: Yes yes, we can all smell it. ;)

Usually if someone knows they're not paying enough and never says anything to the utility about it, the home or business owner is on the hook for the estimated usage once the utility catches the problem.

But reading the article, it sounds like the meter was never physically read and she never had any idea what a "normal" bill was supposed to be. However, if there was a leak on her side of the meter, particularly one that started after she moved in, she's on the hook for that if she didn't take steps to confirm that the leak was fixed.

@Leksi Wit: I absolutely love CUB. They are an amazing organization, and their "phone bill saver" tool helped us lower our ~$40 AT&T landline bill to ~$14!

Wow, a 25 year-old leak and they are just now getting around to fixing the problem. This is a lot like Office Space where they just 'fixed the glitch', but instead of cutting off Milton's paychecks they all of a sudden began billing the woman in question the difference of what she should have been billed.

I suspect that the village has a financial shortfall if they are anything like many of the small towns in Illinois. They are likely over-budget and will look to any sort of method to reign in monies owed to them, even if it is a bit on the unethical side.

Take the matter to the public utilities commission. If you only lived there half of the time as indicated from the article, they can't bill you for usage beyond the point of residency. If they could, think of what that would mean for people moving into previously occupied homes and apartments. No, this needs to be addressed and they will likely back down outside of the last 3-6 months. If they even remotely considerate, they will take the back-dated charges and spread them out over the course of a year.

Something very similar happened to our condo building last year. The city of Chicago put in a new meter reading system that wirelessly transmits the reading to a truck direct from the meter. Before there was an indoor main meter which was connected to a meter outside which was read by the water guy. Well, turns out that for 10+ years the outdoor meter was going too slow, so when they did a final read on the indoor meter our bill came to $1500 (normally it is $130-$170). Thank goodness it was a) for our entire building and b) not so much money that we couldn't afford to pay it. It kind of borked our budget for a few months, but now we're back to where wanted to be reserve-wise and the water bills are back to normal.

@Eyebrows McGee: It probably varies from state to state but in some locations the water bill IS settled at closing. The title company actually handles the transfer and settles the final bill.

@HalOfBorg: That sounds right. Our neighbors had a separate water meter installed for just their sprinkler system, so they won't be charged sewage fees on that water.

and this is the main reason why I wont sign up for automaic billpay via my bank accounts. So some error doesnt drain my bank account & earn me overdraft fees.

I'd rather have complete control over my utility bills. And write a check & use a stamp if I have to.

I had a family member recently pass away. We shut the water off in her house and still received a massive bill. When we called the water department, they said there must be a water main leak. When they dug up the lawn, they discovered that her water meter was connected to her neighbor's house. She had been paying her neighbor's water bill for years.

Just ask the government for a Bailout, they seem to be giving free money away to anyone who requests it.

I would totally read my meter, except my tiny town pays a flat rate for water from Greenville. $45 a month, regardless of usage, with threats to rise to $150 a month to replace sewer lines from the 1950s.

My little town is the land that time forgot. Or abandoned.

@forgottenpassword: word. i'll never let a utility willie-nilie access my bank account. In fact, the city utility bill is the only one I still pay by check.

@barty: It's not a leak, though, is it? It sounds to me like the outside meter wasn't keeping up with the inside meter.

I called my utility (Detroit Edison) a couple of years ago to report my electric meter was jammed, and to request a repair. They ignored me for months, and sent me $0 electric bills.

When they finally figured it out, they sent me a multi-thousand $ estimated bill.

When I reminded them they were supposed to fix my meter months earlier (and my request was on record), they actually forgave the bill!

Sometimes honesty pays.

I had a $5000+ utilities bill once for on-campus housing during college. I know 4 college kids can do some damage with computers left on and lots of electronics, but that was a bit ridiculous. When we called to object, we were told we needed to contest the amount in writing with cause, otherwise we'd be on the hook for it. We wrote up a list of silly things that could be done with that amount of energy, like run 13 industrial freezers and drive to Disney World and back(from Maryland) 18 times with a specific electric car.

My favorite conversion started with kwH to food calories, then calories to cheerios, cheerios to zinc, and zinc to number of pennies we could mint. It was like 2400 pennies worth of zinc, which, if we had actually done the conversion would still leave us over $5000 short of our bill.

When we delivered our letter in person, the secretary laughed at us and asked if she could keep a copy to hang up.

We ended up not paying utilities for that period, which has led me to the conclusion that if you write a funny enough complaint letter, companies/schools give you free stuff, unless you write to Amazon, and then you just get comedy gold in return.

my monthly bill for 2 adults is $10-$20 per month(summertime around $20 with watering the garden - im in NJ).

how much water is she using for it to average $150?!

@ElizabethD: This is when I want an edit button, it just hurts me to look at that "contact's"!

@weakdome: In Illinois, the difference is actually how the municipality is incorporated. I grew up in a "village" of 33,000. The "city" of Cairo, Illinois, has only 3,600 residents.

Wikipedia sez: "Municipalities in Illinois are called cities, towns, or villages. There are no differences among them that would affect their classification for census purposes; however, villages are governed by a board of trustees and village president rather than a city council and mayor. The minimum population requirement for incorporation as a city is 2,500; for villages, it depends on various factors including the population of the county." [en.wikipedia.org])

@HarcourtArmstrong: Did they credit your account and bill the neighbor, or did they not care because they were already paid?

@Eyebrows McGee: We also, incidentally, have townships, which are sort-of like mini-counties that overlay everything. Some counties have precincts instead of townships. Those precincts are distinct from voting precincts, which everybody has. Illinois has one of the most complex sub-state political division systems in the US.

Confusingly, our school districts and school borders w/in districts are frequently set by township rather than by city ... so you might move into a city that has good schools, but end up in the wrong township and therefore in a different school district. I pay property taxes to the city, county, township, park district, CC district, library district, school district, and .... water district, I think. I might have left a couple out. There are like 12 or 15 entities that collect property taxes from me, but two of them are pension funds so they don't count.

"A lot of them are over-billed because the outside remote gets shooken up"

You gotta watch that shooking. It's dangerous stuff.

@nicemarmot617:

She has to prove that the water usage occured before she bought the house. Which would mean that all she would have to do is show proof of the meter reading when she purchased the place. If she didn't bother to check that sort of thing...well, she's probably screwed.

When we bought our condo in Chicago a few years ago, we had to have a certificate from the Chicago Water Department (or whatever their name is) stating that there was no money due for our apartment. Otherwise, Chicago Title & Trust wouldn't go forward with the closing. Damn inconvenient but, on the other hand, it DID make for less hassle.

@Borax-Johnson: THIS

They didn't care about not getting this money before so why should she be in a hurry to pay off water usage accumulated before she even moved in?

"How much are you paying for your water?"

"I don't have a meter on my well water."

"Well how much?"

"I Don't have a meter on my well water."

....

Helloo....

Isn't that great money maker for the city, long term problem billed at the current rate and on top of it when the problem began there probably wasn't a sewer surcharge in place

@HalOfBorg:

3600 dollars over 25 years? Even if this weren't about a faulty meter and not a leak, I doubt you'd even notice a patch of vegetation growing in thicker from a leak like that.

@henwy: Why is the onus on her to prove that? Shouldn't the water company have to prove all of the usage occurred after she bought the house to be able to bill her for it?

When I first moved into my home and I called the water company I had to give them an initial reading from the indoor meter. I'm sure they always do something like this. But anyway, if the meter was broken back when she moved in then the reading won't help much.

@forgottenpassword: Word.

BofA did that to me with their automatic bill pay program. I had a $55.84 electric bill payment due and the bank sent them $5584.00... needless to say they got their three $35 overdraft fees and a $35 returned item fee and the utility company got me for another $25 returned item fee before we got it straightened out. Meanwhile my payment was late and late fees were applied.

I will NEVER use automatic bill pay again.

@bobloblawsblog: I live in OR, when I was living where I had to pay a water bill every other month, and it was about $300 per bill (granted, this was with six people in the house). Still, I think that's rather exorbitant and I am stuck believing that one of my roommates and her twice-daily showers are to blame for some of that.

But now my building pays for water.. yay!

She needs to be talking to someone with more authority. I can't imagine any possible argument for saying she used an unexplained 700,000 gallons of water. Let's say there was a leaky toilet running 3 gallons an hour -- that's 25 years worth of a leak! Remember, the meter is inside, meaning any leak in the water main is not being measured.

The clerk must have set back charges off recent actual readings since there was no actual reading on record. in any event, she needs to talk to someone higher up in her town. This is abuse of power to be making up charges because they are not sure of her actual use

There HAS to be some sort of statute of limitation on how far back they can try to collect.

Another example of Government ran business. A lot of you hate private companies, and I'm not saying water should be private. I'm just stopping in to remind you guys of how Government does business. You pay that bill or we'll come down hard on your a$$.

How would a private business react? Well it couldn't be any worse. If there was competition, may make a deal to keep her as a customer. If there wasn't competition, maybe make a payment plan.

or better yet, if it was a company, she could take it to court and have a fighting chance.

I had a situation where I signed up for electric when I moved into a rental and never got a single bill. I assumed maybe it was included in my rent but after two years I got a letter saying they were going to cancel my service if I didn't pay. Confused I called and when the confirmed that I had lived there so long, I suddenly owed $1600 from the last two years of electric! When I called the Boston Department of Public Utilities, they said that if I could prove that I had indeed set the service up (I still had my email confirmation from when I had), then I was legally only responsible for 6 months worth. It was true!!!