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A B.C. woman is reminding people to keep a close eye on their BC Hydro bill after she was overcharged for well over a decade.

Sandra Schuk of Savona discovered the error on her January 2018 hydro bill.

“There was a notation on my January bill saying that I was a business and I said, ‘I’m not a business. I’m just a single family dwelling on an acreage,’” Schuk said.

Schuk has kept all of her BC Hydro bills for the last 14 years. She says the notation on her bill, which surfaced at the beginning of 2018, stated she was a sole proprietorship, something she says never surfaced on her previous bills.

She contacted BC Hydro immediately.

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“I said, ‘I’ve been charged incorrectly all this time since I moved here 14 years ago,’” said Schuk.

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BC Hydro admitted to the error, but Schuk says a representative told her they would only correct the billing rate back to January 2018 due to company policy.

“He said our policy is to only go back to the time that you call in about it and that was it. They aren’t going to do any more,” Schuk said.

Frustrated, Schuk reached out to Consumer Matters.

“I thought, ‘Who am I going to go to try and get it back to the very beginning because it was wrong from the day I moved in here?’ So, I decided to go to Consumer Matters and in three days time I had an answer.”

BC Hydro Spokesperson Mora Scott told Consumer Matters, “This is an issue that dates back to 2002 and something that’s happened over the past 16 years.”

“The original customer at this premise was a commercial customer. When the current customers moved in they built a home on the property. When a new home is built on the property, the developer or contractor is supposed to reach out to BC Hydro to let us know so we can update the rate and unfortunately that didn’t happen in this case.

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“We went back over 16 years of records and there’s no indication the contractor or developer ever reached out to us,” Scott added. “So at the end of the day there’s no fault on BC Hydro, but we can’t fault the customer either. The contractor, developer didn’t do their job here and unfortunately they [the Schuks] were overcharged as a result.”

BC Hydro would not tell Consumer Matters how much of a credit Schuk received, only that it was a few thousand dollars.

Sandra Schuk said she is thankful for Consumer Matters’ help.

“I’d like to say thank you very much because I just thought they [BC Hydro] would never give it to us – ever,” she said.

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Consumer Matters did reach out to the developer, but did not receive a response.