Florida woman spent $15K on new appliances to fight sky-high utility bills — then found out she was footing the bill for a home miles away

The bill, in fact, kept climbing, hitting $970 during the summer and leaving Doll “so distraught” because “there’s no way we can afford a $1,000-a-month electric bill for a home.”

And the electric bill wasn’t the only thing draining her bank account. In an effort to get the charges under control, Doll, described as a “retiree,” told the outlet that she paid between $12,000 to $15,000 on a new washing machine, dryer, air conditioner and other appliances, while also hiring an electrician to inspect the issue multiple times.

Then, in September, after 57 months of electric bill stress, another Duke technician finally discovered that Doll was accidentally paying rates for a home more than twice the size of her own — and several miles away.

The shocking cost of electricity bill errors

The Fox 13 story notes the Duke technician discovered the serial number on Doll’s bill didn’t match that on her own meter and had, in fact, been “mixed up” with one belonging to a 4,000 to 5,000 square foot home on Florida’s Treasure Island — up to 12 miles away. Doll’s home is 1,500 square feet.

Doll added that she believes that the mistake traces back to an accidental meter switch in 2022, adding that Duke Energy refunded her almost $11,000.

A spokesperson for Duke Energy told Moneywise that “We apologize for any inconvenience this error may have caused. Our customers only pay for the energy they use, so after something like this is discovered, we worked to correct it immediately.”

Average residential electricity costs, meanwhile, climbed 3.4% year-over-year in August to 18.16 cents/kwh, according to the latest Energy Information Administration data. They’re up almost 44% since 2015.

And with around 14 million Americans in “utility debt so severe that it was sent or soon will be sent to collections,” as the Century Foundation warned last year, utility bill mix-ups only exacerbate the problem.

SM Engineering Co., a Minnesota-based utility management and consulting firm, explains that various factors can result in utility bill errors, from misread meters to tariff miscalculations, gaps or delays in usage billing dates and even misclassifications of properties as commercial, industrial or residential.

And while no specific stats for meter mix-ups, like the one Doll experienced, exist, states often report offering small fortunes in refunds to customers after utility mistakes. In 2024, for example, California refunded consumers $4,383,393 following complaints over energy bills, while Massachusetts handed back more than $788,000 in utility bill adjustments and Washington returned upwards of $268,000 after customer complaints.

That same year, billing issues related to a new customer information system cost Central Hudson $62.59 million following a New York State Public Service Commission investigation.

Meanwhile, Duke Energy previously faced potential fines in Ohio following a customer service software problem that led to 100,000 billing errors, but a 2025 settlement saw the company offer $1.2 million in billing credits while also allowing it to recoup millions in lost payments from customers.

The Duke Energy spokesperson pointed Moneywise to the company’s recent push to lower rates in Florida too, striking an agreement with the state to lower the “typical” customer’s bill by $33 dollars, year-over-year, in January 2027.