INDIANAPOLIS — "It says the account balance is $10,521.42," said Sue Hildebrandt, holding the latest bill she received from AES Indiana this week.
The utility bill is for a property Hildebrandt said she flipped over the past six months and sold in November.
"Clearly, this is a mistake," she said, looking at the bill again. "There's no way. It's a 1,000-square-foot, two-bedroom house."
A house whose new owners, Hildebrandt said, took over the utilities the day they closed on it Nov. 6. The bill Hildebrandt opened Monday was for the six days before that, when the electric billing was still in her name.
"I didn't even know you could get a bill for $10,000 dollars in six days. This one is the prior bill for 28 days. The total on that was $25.97," Hildebrandt said, holding last month's bill for the same property.
She got on the Next Door app to tell others about her electric bill issues and found out she wasn't alone. Others chimed in with similar problems.
One man told 13News on the phone when he called to check on his balance, he was told the system showed he hadn't paid his bill since 1970.
13News reached out to AES Indiana to ask if customers were reporting having billing issues. A spokesperson responded with an email explaining that last month, the company went through systems upgrades and transformed their digital platforms.
According to the email, because of those upgrades, fewer than 10% of AES Indiana customers had problems, either not receiving a bill or getting one with an error.
The statement also said, in part, "Our team is taking comprehensive steps to resolve these issues."
The email advised customers with billing issues to report them online. The AES Indiana website also has a chat feature for questions and customer service numbers to call to report issues.
The statement advised customers may experience longer wait times because of a larger-than-normal call volume.
"The chat line was down last night when I tried to get online, there wasn't anybody available. I can't say I blame them. I wouldn't want to be available either," said Hildebrandt, chuckling. She said she got through on the online chat Tuesday morning.
"They said they'd have to give me a case number and it would have to be looked into about three to four days or maybe longer due to the high call volume," Hildebrandt said.
She's just thankful she doesn't have automatic bill pay on her account.
"Can you see somebody's banking account that got hit with this and is ... it's going to be three to four business days, maybe a little bit longer before we can resolve this issue and in the meantime, right before Christmas?" said Hildebrandt.
She's not losing sleep over it.
"There's no way I'm going to pay this. I know I'm not going to pay it. I don't owe it," Hildebrandt said.
Now she's just waiting for the utility company to agree with her.