Woman discovers she's been paying utility bills for her entire apartment building for the last 2 years

The cost of living has been increasing and everything from electricity to restaurant food has become expensive. However, that does not mean it has gone so high that one person has to pay about $400 for utilities. A woman, who goes by the name @vapestar69 on TikTok, shared that she recently was shocked to find out that she has been paying utility charges for the whole building for two years.

"So I just found out that I have been paying utility bills for my entire apartment building since December 2021. I've been paying for everyone's heating, laundry and lights for two f****ng years. And I called them when it was expensive and be like, this seems really expensive and they were like, that's how much it is and finally we figured it out because my ex who moved out never canceled their service even when I asked them to like 10 million times," the woman shared frustration in her viral video.

The video has garnered over 5 million views and is captioned, "I just thought that the cost of living was that high." People were quite shocked after getting to know about this. @faris125 commented, "So none of the other people were like, 'Hey, why don't I have any utilities to pay?'" @deleted101_32 shared, "As a person who works for a utility company, this can happen." @n4ki4h said, "Sounds about right. I was in leasing and the average was about $80-100/month. We had one tenant paying $400+/month for 4 apartments." @beyoncesearlobe expressed, "Oh, you need to sue them to high heaven, get free rent and a refund check."

To give more clarity about the situation, she posted a follow-up video, where she explained what exactly happened. She said that after her former partner moved out, as he was "the only person on our SDG&E account" he told her that he "changed all the stuff over." But when she went to take a new service, they said that the person needed to call and cancel the account. The next time, they let her open the account and she thought the last account was canceled. She recently got to know that her ex's account was never canceled and so the only reason she was able to start another account was because they thought she was the landlord. "They didn't write down the unit number when I told them," she said in the video. 

The woman later uploaded another video, answering a comment that she lives in a building with 10 small units and she was paying about $400, sometimes in the winter months. "It always felt so weird to me because I'm like we have a two bedroom, two bathroom apartment that sub-1000 square feet and so much of the bill is always gas and we have an electric stove and never run the heater," stated the woman.

In another video in her series, she said the SDG&E department had informed her she would be getting her money back, but it would be a lengthy process. "Because they have to go through a backlog of two years of billing and essentially rebuild me for what I'm supposed to be paying and they also have to verify with the landlord that he is the building owner," the woman shared in the video.

You can follow @vapestar69 on TikTok for more lifestyle content.

Editor's note: This article was originally published on January 24, 2024. It has since been updated.