I've got you all beat here in Santo Domingo. Up until May I was paying around $1,500. For the month of May, I got a bill for $3,000. I didn't think too much of it because I knew the rates had gone up.
I just received my bill for June: $8,243!! There are only 2 of us in the house- they claim we used 900 kW. Going to call Edesur now, but I doubt they'll do anything.
The same thing happened to us too.
I used an average of 300 Kwh / month from Oct. to April, than it went up to May 491, June 519, July 692, and now it's 1100!!!! For no reason.
There is one more thing that pi$$ed me off big time. In June I was going to complain to EN about the higher usage - for no reason, when one day - I was not home - an Edenorte contractor showed up at our house, and explained to my wife - who's spanish is not well - that they are here to check what's going on, because of the irregular usage. She was happy, because we where going to call them anyway, but it's very unusual from the dominican "customer service" to show up at your house- without calling them. Anyway, they where messing with the meter, I know that they opened it, because I did find the old seal on the ground - and they said that our meter was not hooked up right, and they fixed it, and all should be OK now. It was kind of strange of a diagnostic, because if it was not hooked up right it would show high or low usage all the time. I'd understand if the meter went bad for some reason and that would cause the high usage. They did not changed the meter for sure, because the serial number is the same as it was before. We thought all is good now, and we will pay our regular usage again, however the next bill was even higher, went up from 519 to 692!!! So our bill was DR$ 5000. (Now it will be 10,000!)
But that was nothing!!! When we paid our bill at the EN office, they told us, that we have to pay DR$ 19,000- fine for stealing electricity!!!!!!!????
WTF???? Are these guys out of their F-ing mind??? Based on what??
They said if we won't pay the fine they will disconnect the power.
Now what can I do??? We feel that they are totally screwing us out of $$$$ and there is nothing that we can do.
We are paying our bills since October in time, never miss a payment. Nothing changed in our household that would indicate a higher usage.
I changed all bulbs for the low-energy type, removed the electrical water heater and replaced with a propane heater in the first week we moved in. All our TVs are low energy LCDs.
We have A/C in the bedrooms, washer, dishwasher which we used before the same way when we paid a lot less.
Now I try to figure out what the hell is going on. I have only 1 neighbor, our connection is at the other side of the house, I don't think he's steeling he does not have A/C. When I turn off all the fuses in the house the "current usage" counter on the meter goes to zero as it should. I have people coming tomorrow to check our inversor and connections. Beside that I don't know what else to do.
I wonder if anyone had a similar situation.
The Hun