Know what? It's going to be okay. It'll work out. Might mean a few confusing customer service calls, but you obviously haven't tried to defraud them, and any mistake wasn't yours.

It'll be okay! Seriously.

I would try to meet with them face to face. And even if you "lose," you'll be able to pay it off in time, since it was not your mistake.

I am with pup on this. I'll be OK.

Of course you're worried, because it's messed up! But don't let your mind spin too hard until you have more facts.

JackFlash had good advice, and you'd probably already thought of it --- test the meter to be sure it's the right one.

If you've overpaid, they'll either (I'm guessing, which I wouldn't do in AskMe) credit your account or reimburse directly. Doesn't that sound right to others?

If you've been underpaying, the worst-case scenario is that you'll have to work out a payment plan. That's worst-case --- it doesn't mean it'll happen.

I completely agree with what Elsa and pup and everyone say. Power companies, for whatever reason, are among the more reasonable people to deal with financially. They should understand, and if there's a problem, just do the thing of working your way up the chain of command, patiently and pleasantly explaining your problem. They will most likely work with you even if you end up owing, and it will be manageable. Don't freak out!

I lived in a triplex in UCSB's student ghetto of Isla Vista a long time ago. The unit was a duplex with a garage between the two that the owner remodeled into a two story apartment. The landlord tells us that we share the electricity and the gas with the apartment in the back and that in the past one tenant would pay for gas and the other electric but it was up to us to work out. The smarter and pretty girls in the unit behind us said they'd pay the electricity if we paid the gas. We thought is sounded like a great idea since it was Santa Barbara and it rarely would be cold enough to run the furnace. We'd be making out like bandits! Flash forward to the end of the school year when we're in our living room watching TV with the neighbor in the front and the power goes out. He laughs "you guys didn't pay your electric bill either!?" and we tell them that we had that deal with the girls in the back apartment. We then realize that only the power went out in half of the apartment. The guys in the front had been paying the power bill for half of our apartment all year. They were cool about it since they hadn't been paying the bill for the last several months either (our share of the bill wasn't that much, they were all leaving and spent their money on beer and good times and decided ruining their credit rating with the electric company wouldn't matter). I have no idea whether the electric company ever got their money from those guys, but we did pay them in beers over the months so my conscious is clean.

I relate this story because in some situations apartments aren't wired correctly to reflect the various apartments -- in our case, it was clear garage/second story conversion was not done up to code and I doubt proper permits and whatnot were obtained.

Also, someone had been paying your electric bill all those year while you apparently were paying for your neighbors electricity. Now, the question is did your upstairs neighbors ever pay or were they living with free electricity? If the bill for your lights had gone unpaid for too long, they would have cut the power leaving you in the dark.

The situation will have to resolved by the power company making a physical inspection of the property to see who they have listed as each unit and account with them. I would imagine what they'd do is straighten out the situation in their computers to reflect the reality of the apartment building. Since you've been paying your bill all this time, there's nothing for you to worry about. Either they've been applying your bill to the wrong account, or when your new neighbors moved in they changed something and now thing you're a different meter. If the electricity for your physical unit was unpaid, then the worst thing they could due is apply the amount you paid each month to the correct unit. The money you might have errantly been paying for the place upstairs is their problem, not yours.

It will work itself out and you won't be holding the bag for unpaid electricity. It wasn't your mistake. You've done nothing wrong.