SAN ANTONIO -- You might think not receiving your monthly CPS Energy bill would be reason to celebrate. But it could mean something's wrong.
The utility's policy is to stop sending you bills when they detect a big increase in usage.
As News 4 WOAI Trouble Shooter Jaie Avila reports, that policy has left one military mom with a huge power bill right as she's about to deploy.
It's the way most of us discover our home is using too much power, or an appliance is malfunctioning: we notice it on our bill. Michelle Carter says it makes no sense for CPS Energy to stop sending it to you. Michelle says she had no idea her air conditioner was suddenly using four times as much energy.
"My husband is deployed to Iraq, I have a two year old son, and in three weeks I deploy myself for the next two and a half months", she told us.
Michelle says this is the worst possible time for her to get a close to $1,900 electric bill.
Sometime in July, Michelle's air conditioning and heating unit malfunctioned, and they both began running at the same time. Her house was still cool, but the air conditioner was using tremendous amounts of power to compensate for the heater.
"Nothing in my house lent itself to think I had a problem, the only way I would have known was through that electric bill."
But when CPS Energy detected a spike in her usage, it didn't send her a bill for July, or any kind of notice that something was wrong. Michelle conscientiously called CPS, even estimated her July payment and sent it in, but customer service wouldn't give her any information about her account.
"They didn't tell me that my energy consumption had quadrupled. They didn't give me an opportunity to investigate on my end. Meanwhile, my bill continued to quadruple for two and a half months straight", she complained.
Finally, on September 1st, she received a huge bill for almost $1,900. CPS told her it took all that time to investigate and determine that it's meter was not to blame for the increase, and for the first time, informed Michelle she might want to check her appliances.
The very next day Michelle had the air conditioner problem fixed, and she says it would have been done two months ago, if CPS Energy had just sent her a bill.
She added, "You look at the bill you see the charts, I mean, it's quadrupled even on the charts! I would have called CPS and said, 'Why is my bill like this?'"
For two days we tried to get an interview with the Director of Customer Service for CPS Energy, Sandra Nobile Currans. We even went down to CPS Energy headquarters in person, but we were told she was busy in meetings.
CPS Energy did send us a statement though, saying:
"We will continue to further investigate this case, in an attempt to arrive at a reasonable resolution."
But the utility says it won't be changing its policy about not sending out bills. Even if it leaves some customers in the dark about problems.
A CPS Energy spokesman says if you don't get a monthly bill, call them immediately to see if they are investigating a change in energy consumption.
But since the woman in our story couldn't get much information that way, you may also want to have an electrician check your appliances, just in case.
