Patricia didn’t receive PG&E bills from September 2023 to May 2024. After she inquired, she found that her costs had skyrocketed.

Patricia received past-due bills in June after contacting PG&E customer service about not getting billed.

For the past 30 years, Patricia didn’t pay much attention to her PG&E bills.

A 73-year-old retired school psychologist who asked me not to use her last name to protect her privacy, Patricia is living on Social Security and a pension, so she didn’t have much financial wiggle room. But she was careful to conserve energy and limit her expenses. When a PG&E bill arrived, she typically just gave it a cursory glance before paying.

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She’ll never make that mistake again.

Earlier this year, Patricia checked her bank statements and saw that she hadn’t received a power bill since August 2023, the same month utility workers came to her Cow Hollow apartment building in San Francisco to replace the meters.

Her power was working just fine. Why wasn’t she being charged?

She could have stayed quiet so as not to alert PG&E to the missing bills, but Patricia wanted to do the right thing. So, in April, she notified customer service representatives that she wasn’t being charged.

In early June, Patricia finally received a bill. And when she did, her mouth fell open.

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It was for $347.08.

The last bill she’d gotten back in August had been $11.02.

Patricia was gobsmacked. How could she possibly have racked up that much in charges? She lived alone and used as little as possible between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. when rates were highest.

She didn’t know how she would pay the bill.

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