AGL customer Colin Spargo with the bill. Picture: SYLVIA LIBER
Last Friday Colin Spargo got a shock when he opened his quarterly AGL bill - it had risen by 1100 per cent.
Mr Spargo, who lives in Warilla, said his bill last quarter was $138, but this current bill was a huge $1660.
And it's not the first time he's been massively over-charged.
"I've only been in the place since January and this was my third bill," Mr Spargo said.
"My first bill was $950 and they told me the bloke must have just done an average. I said: 'How can you do an average when it's my first bill?'
"That got fixed up and came down to about $151.
"The next bill was correct because I went out and read the meters afterwards."
And then this $1660 bill turned up in the letterbox.
"With this bill as soon as I got it I just laughed, because I knew it was wrong," he said.
"It meant that I was using $27 worth of electricity each day, according to them.
"I went out and read the meters and they've charged me about 4000 watt hours over. They haven't even read the meter."
Mr Spargo lives in a three-bedroom house with another person. They don't run power-hungry appliances like airconditioning and don't often turn on things like computers or TVs. He also said he wasn't at home often enough to use $27 worth of electricity every day.
"I get up at 4.30 in the morning, I boil the kettle and then I go to work," he said.
"I get home in the afternoon and I very rarely cook at home, I go down to the club to eat."
After waiting over the weekend, Mr Spargo said he contacted AGL on Monday and was told someone would be sent out to read the meter on Thursday.
"I asked for compensation and he said, 'We don't do that. But what we will do is waive the extra reading charge'.
"What they do is charge $44 plus GST if you want your meter read again. That was very big-hearted of them to waive that charge for me.
"Also he said he was going to put the bill on hold.
"I told him he could do whatever he liked because I wasn't paying it until I got the correct bill."
Saying the woman living with him was quite stressed about the large bill - they split expenses down the middle - Mr Spargo was surprised that systems weren't in place to stop this sort of thing from happening.
"To my way of thinking they should have a red flag on the computer," he said.
"If somebody's bill comes out at double their last bill, the red flag should come up, a manager should look at it and think, 'Hang on, there could be something wrong here'.
"Then they could ring up the client, see if there's any reason for it - sort it out before it even gets this far."
An AGL spokesperson said: "The task of physically reading the meter is subcontracted out, but this is determined by the relevant distributors' business practices.
"AGL is provided with the read data by the distribution company, but we do not directly hold responsibility for reading the meter."
The spokesperson also explained why Mr Spargo's meter was not read before sending him this latest bill.
"Due to a locked gate at Mr Spargo's premises, an actual read of the meter was not obtained and therefore the distribution company submitted an estimated read for the billing period of 11/07/2012 to 16/10/ 2012," the spokesperson said.