A Kamloops resident was nearly billed $5,000 by BC Hydro due to a faulty smart meter.
Homeowner Trevor "Trapper" Cameron almost had to pay $4,800 for a single hydro bill until BC Hydro acknowledged that the meter installed outside Cameron's home was flawed.
"For every dollar we were using, it was five dollars, so [we would have had to pay] five times the amount," said Cameron.
BC Hydro Director of Customer Care Jim Nicholson said it is common for new digital equipment to have glitches, but what Cameron experienced has never occurred before.
"What we're doing is stepping up our vigilance within the field operations groups to ensure that as meter readers are doing regular reads, they're looking for any anomalies that might, in fact, indicate to us there may be another one," Nicholson said.
While Cameron is content that his hydro bill has been revised to $180, opponents to the smart meters are not convinced that this faulty measurement was an isolated incident.
"I don't buy that all," said Brad Thiessen, who has been campaigning to pull the plug on smart meters. "This has been happening in Texas, California, Australia, Ontario…B.C is going to be no different."
With a file from CTV British Columbia's Kent Molgat
