Visayan Electric consumer with P877,000 bill wont sue, wants right bill settled
CEBU CITY, Philippines — The Visayan Electric household consumer whose bill reached P877,045 for a 90-day reading period said their family will not be filing charges against the utility.
However, they want to know why a mistake in their billing was made and they want to know their actual bill so they can pay only for what they are due.
Jrea Mary Mae Punay-Sarmiento told CDN Digital that they were extremely shocked when they received the bill as the amount reached near a million.
It was 125 times larger than their average monthly consumption of P6,000 to P7,000.
“Na shock jud nga di sad katoo. Actually, nag expect napod mi nga tingali usa mi sa ma apektuhan sa mga mali-mali na charging ni VECO. Kay nadungog nasad namo sa radyo ang daghan na complaints sa consumers. Nya wa sd mi mag expect nga mo shoot up og ingon ana sad kadako ang amoa bill,” she said.
(We were shocked and couldn’t believe it. Actually, we expected that we were among those affected in the erroneous charging of VECO. Because we heard on the radio that there were a lot of complaints from consumers. But we didn’t expect our bill to shoot up like that.)
Punay-Sarmiento said that they are awaiting for Visayan Electric to reach out to them as promised to settle the bill.
Engineer Daryl Bonbon, the vice president for customers services, said in a press conference on March 2, 2022, that there was a mistake in the encoding and reading.
READ: Visayan Electric: Over P800K reflected on consumer’s February 2022 bill ‘erroneous’
“Naa gyod to’y sayop sa pag encode,” he said. “Kami mangayo lang mig dispensa sa niingon inato.”
(There was a mistake in the encoding. We apologize for that.)
He assured the consumer that they will fix the bill and set it right. They will also be reaching out to the consumer in the coming days.
Bonbon urged consumers whose bills shot up more than five times to reach out to Visayan Electric for clarification and investigation.
A two-time or three-time increase of the bill can be attributed to bill lumping and increased consumption, but an increase of more than five times can already be considered outrageous.
READ: Bill lumping and increased consumption behind rise in electric bill — Visayan Electric
Visayan Electric is prepared to handle the billing concerns of customers over these matters.
/bmjo
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