That’s brutal! I thought most companies have the app where you can see everything.
Without smart meters, mines by the month between reads….
Electrician can’t check between meter & main without the utility there, but a lot just cut the seal here and do it themselves.

Did they mess up the billing and place a multiplier on it ?

I know our rate is going up as Basin is building a new base load plant that I believe is natural gas because predictions for the future are more electric usage, Siemens makes a monitor to give you hard data to help you argue with the electric company you must have an apple or google account to download the app, here is a link.

https://www.siemens.com/us/en/products/energy/low-voltage/new-homes/inhab.html

Our electric utility prints the last year's usage on the bill that comes out each month. It should be no secret. Nor should the rate they charge on the usage. Then or now.

Delivery rates are going sky high here in N.Y., we're getting screwed big time. These companies are out of control.

It's going to get out of hand when all these data centers come on line

Got ours today. $140 bux
Gas was $69 bux
Trash water sewer for 2 months was $146 bux

That’s why about 4-5 years ago we said no more bit coin operations. Companies all over the world were coming for our cheap power and cold temps. The constant steady draw is crazy. They were showing up at old rural farm properties telling the owner that if he’d upgrade his service to +800A or bigger they’d pay exponentially more for the property. One small 60 acre parcel worth about $250000, they offered him $2mil after a service upgrade. Some small operations sneak through the cracks, but we find them come winter, then they’re shut down.

Steve49ers is right. These data centers area bidding on huge amounts of electricity that doesn’t exist jacking up the rates for everyone. Plus all the infrastructure costs to upgrade the sites for the centers gets passed on to all rate payers.

Our town went through this a while back, I read everything from the paper to Facebook, neighbor to neighbor everyone was complaining! Same thing went on with them. Not sure if it had gotten better or if they just got use to it because the complaining has slowed down. People went to the electric company, the city board, also made the local news ky3. But pretty sure they all just said move on, nothing was going to be changed

If it’s consistently bad enough month after month, out here a customer can start a meter dispute……that’s after we’ve given his service a quick once over and tried to check some of his side of the meter. We connect a $25000 little piece of equipment to the service, the cust gets a new meter and the old one is sent back for testing. When the info comes back saying the meter is measuring within 1% or whatever the number is (which it always does in my cases) the customer is billed $80 (probably double that now) and the cost of a new meter.
I’ve showed up at these “meter investigates” to hear the cust say that nothings running. But I see a hot tub steaming on the deck, every light I can see is on. Meter is just humming away and I say “Holy smokes! Yea, that things movin!”…….lol.

Turn your main breaker off in your house, check meter to see if you are still "using" power.

Eric, call the NJ Board of Public Utilities and file a complaint (800) 624-0241 or you can file online:

https://www.nj.gov/bpu/assistance/complaints/inquiry.html

I used to work for the telephone company over in Warwick and this is where our customers in Vernon NJ would file a complaint. Believe me that the BPU will get on Jersey Central but quick!

I lied lol just looked on the news and people are calling for an audit, so I guess there is still problems

Did that and it still appears to be using power, blinking one square of four on the meter.

That’s not good. Somethings leaking between the meter & the main. Megger them cables. You sure you hit your main? Your service underground from the meter to the main?

Nothing is leaking,you are being ripped off

The only thing to do is get a second device to measure what's coming and to compare the two numbers... or change the meter and see if it changes. Nothing says you can't have two meters... have an old one and a new one.

I would make sure both loads on both sides of your panel box are even. I bet being off or some kind of noise or something could be possible? Even if that was the case though it wouldn't match a secondary meter and you would know something was off.

At the factory we would pay an electrician to hook a lie detector up to the meter and it would have a paper chart recorder for example...

Can you get the lawn mower to throw a rock and break the meter?,

Can he not contact PUC if he can’t dispute his meter? You have to have some sort of protections there for the customer, here we’re obligated.

Haha, I’ve had talk with customers like you…..lol. The only meters that might “keep spinning” are the old analogs, and very slowly at that. The couple I saw would’ve tacked on 25 friggin cents a month, but when real load was applied, it measured less than actual. If that meter is spinning more than just a trickle with the main off, there’s something tapped in or you got a problem that’ll eventually expose itself as fire or part power. We change thousands of meters every year here, it’s a federal regulation. They’re all sent back to the manufacture for testing, and when they find that they’re not measuring to within industry standards, the whole batch of meters from that serial number gets replaced.
Only way is to connect a PMI and see what’s going on, and the utility has access to this pricy equipment. Or try getting 2 amp clips off Amazon and clip them up on the hot legs & neutral at the mast, or if you’re U/G find a spot in the panel before the main. Not sure if you’re underground, but breaks are pretty common.