Mom Discovers She's Been Paying Her Neighbor's Electric Bill For 5 Years & Neither The Landlord Nor The Utility Company Will Fix It
She's convinced her neighbor did nothing wrong, but she's not so sure about her landlord.
Prostock-studio | Shutterstock Paying bills is a frustrating yet necessary aspect of the world we live in. Most don’t even like paying their own bills, so they definitely wouldn’t want someone else’s added to the pile.
Unfortunately for one family, that's exactly what happened — and they were unaware for years.
A mom discovered that she’d been paying both her and her neighbor’s electric bills for 5 years.
Lauren Gifford, a mom of four and boutique owner, recently posted a series of TikToks about her startling discovery. According to Gifford, she had unknowingly been paying her neighbor’s electric bill in addition to her own for five years.
“We just found out we’ve been paying our neighbor’s power bill, plus our power bill, for the last five years in our warehouse,” Lauren said in the first video.
She revealed that this was new information to her and her husband, Jared, who was featured in some of the videos.
“We just found out two weeks ago, because we have not been at our warehouse, and yet we still have a bill for almost $500,” Lauren explained.
To make matters worse, no one — not their landlord nor the power company — has helped remedy the egregious mistake.
“The power company doesn’t wanna take care of it," Lauren admitted, "and neither does my landlord."
The mom and her husband were told by their landlord to pay both power bills from the start.
“When we moved in, we were told you have two power bills ‘cause we have a front office and a back warehouse, and they both have little thermostats that you can adjust,” Lauren recalled.
It’s understandable that the pair simply listened to instructions and paid the bills they received. They had no reason to assume they were being lied to.
“It wasn’t until we stopped going there about five months ago that we noticed we were still getting power bills with us not being there,” she admitted.
Lauren and her husband insisted that they do not think their neighbor is at fault for the circumstances they’ve found themselves in.
“Keep in mind, we don’t think this is ill intent on the neighbor’s part,” she said. “This is 100% the landlord, and how they divided the suites, and how they did not switch our energy over.”
In another video, Lauren explained how they confirmed that they had been paying for someone else’s power — they disconnected the power connected to the suspicious bill and still had power in their warehouse.
Luckily, it seems like this story will have a happy ending for the mom.
Lauren and Jared explained in yet another video that they had “consulted with an electrical expert” who had been called to testify in court cases before.
He informed them that their electric company, Nevada Power, had tariffs. Jared defined a tariff as a “moral rule that the company has to abide by.” One of those rules is that “customers are paying for their own power, and somebody else is not paying for their power.”
Hopefully, the utility company and landlord will both cooperate now, especially since Nevada Power, also known as Nevada Energy, says on its website that “paying your energy bill should be as easy as possible.”
The Giffords may also be able to take their landlord, who seemed to be the root of the problem, to small claims court. U.S. News and World Report noted that this is often more effective for tenants than hiring a lawyer.
Thankfully, the Giffords caught this unfair billing practice before it was too late for them to have any recourse. Their story is a reminder that it’s important to keep a close eye on your bills.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer for YourTango who covers entertainment, news and human interest topics.