Utility service blames employee error for customers’ unusually high bills

WINCHESTER, Tenn. (WSMV/Gray News) – A utility service company in Tennessee is blaming an employee’s error for recent spikes in customers’ bills.

The Winchester Utility System released a statement on April 23, addressing the bill spikes that some of its customers have complained about.

WUS said that an internal investigation revealed that a former employee responsible for reading meters failed to perform readings accurately, which then caused some customers to be underbilled over multiple billing cycles.

“This in turn caused certain meters to be under-read over time, meaning customers were not being billed for all the electricity they had actually used,” WUS said. “When this came to light and Winchester Utility System obtained the correct readings, it resulted in larger-than-normal bills for some customers when the underread balance was caught up — understandably causing confusion and frustration.”

Essentially, customers were billed their remaining outstanding balances that they mistakenly weren’t billed for in the first place.

WUS said nearly 1,000 customers were affected by the employee’s mistake. The employee has since been fired.

WUS added that the issue was brought to light by customers reporting the high bills.

“At the time, Winchester Utility did not yet know the full scope of the problem and began investigating reports on an individual basis, assuming these were isolated incidents. They were not isolated incidents,” WUS said.

Dagny Scott is one of the customers who was affected. She said her utility bill was double what it normally is.

“All of a sudden, I’m having to pay twice as much as I normally do,” Scott said. “To pay that lump sum out of pocket, that takes away from other stuff.”

She also doesn’t believe the cost should have been ed along to the customers.

“It’s their fault; they should be the ones to take the blame and not have to bill us for their mistake,” Scott said. “They should have properly trained their employees to read these monitors.”

WUS apologized for the oversight and for not catching the issue sooner. The company said payment plans are available to assist customers who need help catching up on their bills.

Meanwhile, they have vowed to put additional measures in place to prevent something like this from happening again in the future.

Copyright 2025 WSMV via Gray Local Media, Inc. All rights reserved.