A Queens homeowner who spent a decade rationing her air conditioning and hand-washing dishes to hold down her electric bill has learned the real reason the number never budged: Con Edison had been charging her account for the unit one floor above her own.
Nicole Niceforo’s billing mix-up, first reported by Fox 5 NY, went undetected for roughly 10 years. “For 10 years, I was afraid to use my air conditioning,” Niceforo told the station.
Con Edison has since confirmed the error in writing and issued refund checks totaling more than $6,000. But the company is refusing to go further, leaving an estimated four additional years of overpayments, plus interest, unreimbursed.
Niceforo says she tried to flag the problem years earlier. In September 2016, she emailed Con Edison asking that a technician check her meter. Instead of sending one, the utility directed her to the building’s management. She says she felt she had no further recourse, and the bills continued arriving at the same inflated rate for nearly another decade until a new request for testing finally uncovered the swap.
Niceforo described years of repeated phone calls and mounting frustration, and said she felt both angry and vindicated once Con Edison acknowledged the mistake.
The state Department of Public Service is not ordering the utility to pay more. The agency sided with Con Edison’s position that billing corrections are limited to a six-year lookback period, and said it has no record that Niceforo filed a formal complaint in 2016.
That six-year cap is not unique to her case. State lawmakers have pointed to it as a long-standing industry standard that the Public Service Commission follows when customers are overbilled, meaning any money owed to Niceforo from before that window is effectively unrecoverable under current rules.
In a statement, Con Edison said it works with customers who believe their bills don’t reflect actual usage, while maintaining its position on the six-year limit.
Not an isolated case
Crossed meters are a recognized problem in multi-unit buildings, and Niceforo is not the only customer to have been caught by one. In a separate case, a homeowner overpaid an estimated $11,000 over seven years after their meter was mixed up with a neighbor’s — even after paying for upgrades intended to lower their usage.
Con Edison has a history of erratic billing in Queens specifically. The utility once apologized to a Queens man billed $38 million for a single period, an amount later corrected to the $74 he actually owed. Another New York customer said she received bills addressed to the utility pole outside her house, the first one for $5,000.
The errors come as scrutiny of Con Edison’s rates intensifies. Queens Borough President Donovan Richards and union members have publicly opposed the utility’s proposed rate increases, part of a wider push by local officials over the affordability of electricity in the city.
