It’s an unusual crime that has a single mother in Cleveland worried. Her bills are piling up and she said it’s not her fault.
“I felt manipulated. I felt like I was being taken advantage of,” said Deandra Baker from Cleveland’s east side. She lives in a duplex on the top floor in a small apartment. She’s been zapped with high electricity bills. “I opened it up and it said for the month of January $543.”
Baker told us that Cleveland Public Power said that she should get an electrician plugged into the situation at the apartment. She took pictures in February of her meter zooming up and the downstairs apartment had no reading at all, but the tenants were using electricity. The electrician wrote a letter that said the breaker box was tampered with and Baker was paying for electricity going to both units.
Baker talked to her landlord but got no help. She was shocked.
“Everybody is turning their head but it’s wrong,” said Baker.
We called her landlord asking questions but we, too, caught some static as he hung up on us. We even paid a visit to his business only to be told that he wasn’t in.
We knocked on the door for the downstairs apartment from Baker. No one answered. In fact, about a week ago, CPP disconnected the meter to the lower apartment. “The day they took the meter off of the house, that was the last day that I saw (the downstairs tenant) here,” said Baker.
Baker is still on the hook for a collective $1,200 bill after she refused to pay for another person’s electricity.
“How much do I owe? Let me pay what I owe. I’m fine with that but I don’t want to be made responsible for someone else,” said Baker.
We called Cleveland Public Power and its representative told us that the company did an investigation. It concluded the downstairs apartment did not have authorization for power so it pulled the meter. It also said because the problem was with internal wiring that Baker will have to go after the landlord and the tenant to get her money back. The only good news is that Baker will have some time to figure this all out so her electric isn’t shut off.
Baker is not happy.
“I would really like for them to look into this like if it were them or their child because nobody should be stuck with this when they’re clearly being victimized,” she told us.
Here’s the Cleveland Public Power full statement:
“Cleveland Public Power did inform the customer that we would not be issuing a refund to her account because the bills represent actual usage. When she informed CPP that her electrician determined that she was paying the electricity for both units because of internal wiring, she was advised to bring this to the attention of her landlord for resolution. Any wiring inside of the home is not the responsibility of the electric utility; we only handle the wiring from the meter to the pole.
Due to her complaints of high bills, an investigation was conducted, resulting in the removal of the meter to the downstairs unit which was found energized without proper authorization.
Cleveland Public Power advises against the illegal reconnection of electric meters, which is unsafe and illegal.”
Shelley M. Shockley
Marketing Manager
