Owner of St. Catharines, Ont., café fought Enbridge over $56K gas bill error — and won
CBC
It took 10 years of hard work for Ritesh Kumar to save enough money to buy a place in St. Catharines, Ont., that would become his own small coffee shop with a few apartments to rent upstairs.
But before the first coffee could be served, Enbridge Gas Inc. sent him a $56,589 bill for services between July 2021 and December 2023 — just after Kumar purchased the property and before he opened it in July 2024.
“I totally panicked,” said Kumar.
During those years, Kumar said, no one from Enbridge called to inspect the property or notify him about his gas consumption. Meanwhile, he was working to get city approval and renovating.
Kumar said he has since spent more than two years fighting Enbridge, while running Christopher’s Cafe and becoming a father.
His first complaint with Enbridge was filed on Jan. 9, 2024.
Later, he received an email from the company’s customer service team saying his account was incorrectly billed due to inaccurate meter readings, which Enbridge confirmed to CBC.
Kumar is just one of many customers who had problems with Enbridge bills in the past five years.
In 2023, a couple in Ajax, Ont., was billed more than $1,600 due to infrequent meter readings and inaccurate estimates by the company.
The Ontario Energy Board, the province's energy regulator, reviewed the complaints and fined Enbridge $250,000 in 2022 for failing to meet certain standards, including meter reading.
Kumar got a new meter in October 2024, but the $56,589 charge was still showing up on his monthly gas bill. Then, he contacted the office of Enbridge's ombudsman.
Jessie Foster, a senior analyst in Enbridge's Ombuds Office, responded to Kumar and said they obtained readings from July 2021, when he first bought the property.
“Readings that have been provided to us confirm the consumption billed is valid," the email said.
The ombudsman's office noted they even turned services off in October 2022 and July 2023 “as consumption was being used but not being paid for.”
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