OTTAWA — An Ottawa man wants answers after being hit with a huge Rogers bill for services that stayed active at his house months after it burned to the ground.

Still reeling from the loss of his home in March and almost everything in it, Gary Cartwright was shocked when a collections agency called him and said he owed $1,288 on a delinquent Rogers bill.

He was also told his cable had been shut off because of non-payment in September, months after his home was destroyed.

Cartwright, who is battling cancer and is confined to a wheelchair because of multiple sclerosis, is on a fixed income and a bill that size would be a massive hit.

But that's not the point, Cartwright said. He is adamant he called Rogers about a week after the fire, after he had gotten out of the hospital where he was treated for smoke inhalation.

He said he also made a $400 payment prior to the fire and his balance, at that point, was zero.

"I know that everything was in order," Cartwright told QMI Agency from the lobby of the downtown Ottawa hotel where he's been staying for months, paid for by his insurance policy.

He said he cancelled all services at his former home at the same time — hydro, and water, his cable and Internet.

"How can I possibly owe you people any money if there was no house there to have a cable connected to?"

He didn't get much in the way of an answer and nobody seems willing to provide him with a bill explaining the bill math, he said.

But the collections agency is on his trail, having tracked him down at the hotel he stayed in immediately following the fire to the one he's in now.

"They said, 'How do we know it burned down?'" Cartwright said. "You think there would be some common sense there."

After a lengthy search, Cartwright is preparing to move into a new place he's renting in the city’s Dunrobin village. He's doesn't know what's going to come out of the Rogers fiasco, but he's sure about one thing.

"I told them, as far as I'm concerned, I'm not paying it," he said.

Rogers didn't respond to QMI Agency’s request for more information on Cartright's situation.

chris.hofley@sunmedia.ca

Twitter: @chrishofley