Texas Man Receives Insanely High Utility Bill
What the hell is going on out in Lubbock?
KAMC reports that the City of Lubbock sent Mike Toombs a utility bill that was more than 250 times higher than usual. And it’s not like he received a paper bill that he could just take down to City Hall and get corrected. Instead, Toombs uses the auto pay option (and stories like this are the reason I do not).
He noticed the bill when he checked his account to see if his IRS return had come in. He was shocked to see that quite the opposite had happened. His bank account showed a balance of negative $7,800:
I thought I’d been hacked. All of a sudden, I see there is a negative $7,800 in my bank account.
It turns out that the City of Lubbock Utilities had billed him a whopping $52,000. When he called the city about it, they asked him if he was sure he hadn’t left any water running:
Even if I did have a leak, I couldn’t have leaked out $52,000 worth of water!
He’s got a point. Someone in the billing department definitely should’ve noticed that something wasn’t right.
Even though the City told him it was probably an accounting error, Toombs said the meter reading was way off, suggesting it was some sort of data glitch. He says he still hasn’t received confirmation as to what exactly caused the problem.
The good news is that they issued him a new bill of $226, which is in line with what he usually pays for his utilities.