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Comment by dmix | Hacker News Reader

I got charged $600 for two months in Toronto during a cold winter a while back and calling Toronto Hydro got it reduced to the actual $300 it was supposed to be. So FWIW in my situation at least it was worth the effort to look into it.

I was in an older (1980s) apartment building so I couldn't blame a singular meter, I'm not really sure how measurements are done in big buildings (maybe someone could explain?).

I've heard that elsewhere in Ontario, Canada and in Toronto (two different companies) that overcharging is a big recurring issue. I wasn't given a good explanation about my one anecdotal case outside of an 'accounting error'. I just knew that it sounded far too high to be normal.

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> I'm not really sure how measurements are done in big buildings (maybe someone could explain?).

In most jurisdictions, your electricity must be metered separately if you are billed by the utility company. In my building, there is a room with a bank of electricity meters, one for each apartment. Next to it is a bank of gas meters.

Is water different? I lived in a complex (of about 40x 2-3 storey buildings with ~12 apartments each) where they said the water bill was the building total divided by the number of apartments in the building. I wasn't complaining because it was so cheap, but I wondered if it was legal.

It's legal, and in that case you get a water bill from the apartment complex (or the management company) rather than from the utility company.

My lease in California has the water divided up like that; when I signed the lease it was specified as such. I guess the water is cheap enough that nobody really complains.

More importantly there's just one base charge for the apartment complex instead of each unit getting a separate base charge.

As long as it's specified in your signed lease it's ok.

> I'm not really sure how measurements are done in big buildings (maybe someone could explain?).

Similar to klodolph - it's very common in the UK for each dwelling in a shared building to have its own supply, termination point and meter for both electricity and gas.

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