Oak Park Couple Gets $108,000 Electric Bill

By Chris Bentley in News on Feb 22, 2012 5:00PM

The cost of electricity has risen in recent years, but thankfully we have a long way to go before the Mad Max scenario glimpsed by Oak Park resident Kathy Rajter.

Rajter’s first bill under Integrys Energy promised savings — the village recently switched energy suppliers. But instead she and her husband, David, found a bill for $107,625.16.

Unless the Rajters are covertly running a particle accelerator, Integrys apparently overestimated their monthly electric usage by roughly 1.6 million kilowatt-hours.

ComEd still handles the billing under Oak Park’s new arrangement. They couldn’t explain the error, either, although they offered to send someone to Rajter’s house and physically read her meter.

It’s a good thing Rajter, who usually pays her electric bill through an automatic deduction from her bank account, checked the amount this time around. “On [Friday],” she told the Sun-Times, “I’ll be on the phone making sure I still have money in the bank.”