Andi Grant's Blog - Everyday Real Estate with a Twist

DWP Overcharging Already Struggling Homeowners with Monthly Utility Bills in the $1000ds?

I spoke with a wonderful past client today who bought a home in early spring of this year in South Los Angeles area that falls under DWP (Dept of Water and Power) coverage. 

During a conversation, she told me she recently received a $700 bill from DWP for her June/July usage which was a 150% increase since her last April/May bill of $280, which also seemed extraordinarily high.  This was well beyond the 15% increase consumers were informed of in recent months. She has since spoken to neighbors and they too are randomly receiving exorbitant bills from DWP and being left with the option of being forced to pay or not have continued utility service.  

When my client called DWP, she spoke to both customer service and meter depts. The various reasons given to her were:  

• Broken meters
• Difficult meter reads if gate was locked in which meters were said to have been read by looking over fences and gates (you read that correctly).
• Estimates (not actual reads).

Based on a surface Google search, I came across several articles and one in particular that has a L.A. City Councilman Dennis Zine stating, "...customers with new meters that were never connected correctly are likely to receive several years of late bills."  The article also mentions bills coming in the thousands.  This article was posted in April of this year and it is now mid August.  This is clearly a problem that has yet to be resolved by DWP and gov't officials.  Where is this watchdog group for DWP that has yet to be realized? 

So some homeowners are now paying on top of their mortgages, higher gas prices, increased food costs, and now what appears to be  hundreds to thousands of overcharges for general water and power usage?  They are also being informed to pay by the bill's due date (or two week extension) or lose electricity and water?  If that is the case, it's absolutely unacceptable.  Having represented owners of multi-unit properties before, $700 monthly utility bills are what some large apartment building owners could possibly expect to find for water and electricity bills, not single full-time working individuals of single family dwellings.   

Are People Now Forced to Choose Between Sitting in the Dark or Paying Their Mortgage?  

If this type of blatant fleecing of homewowners who are already challenged in this economy is really happening, it's disturbing to say the least.  I've sent the bulk of this blog article to several investigative teams of local news organizations and emailed the LA City councilman Bernard Parks for my client's district and councilman Dennis Zine mentioned in the linked article. 

These poor homeowners need answers and results, and they need them now...or at least before their next DWP bill!

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If you are a victim of what appears to be grossly miscalculated balances of your DWP bills and have had little success with resolving them first with DWP, call or write your local councilman NOW, and/or write to investigative newsteams of local news stations CBS Channel 2 News, ABC Channel 7 News, KTLA (Channel 5), myFoxLA (Channel 11).  Good luck!

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Water meter photo courtesy of ax2groin and electricity meter photo by benswing for Creative Commons Flickr. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic License.