I think this man should pay! He has known for four years that he has been receivng free gas and has done nothing to correct the situation. He was hoping that MLGW would not notice and he could keep receiving free gas. How is the meter reader supposed to know if the customer has gas appliances are not?

Ask yourself what you would do if you received your MLG@W and it was $0. Report it or knowingly steal? Hopefully you whould be smart enough to report it so that you wouldn't have to pay double next month, right? Well this man has been billed for what he should have been paying for all these years. Ignorance is no excuse. If you fail to receive your house note, do you just not pay it???

Just to be clear on some information we didn't yet have when I wrote the first post.

This gentleman was getting and paying a bill every month.  It was a small amount.  But he tells us he thought it was correct since he believed he was very careful with his consumption.

Wow! How can you used gas like everyone else, for your stove, hotwater heater, and to keep warm for 4 years and think that you are special when it comes to your bill. Being an retire police I know he told someone how low his bill was and he was enjoying it. Now it is time to pay it.. Yes, MLG&W should have caught it, but it is just as much his responsiblity.  

tThis is crazy this is not the first time the F up utility company has done this type of crap why are we paying meter readers? How am I an average citizen to know if my meter is broken?There are people who get paid for this and we pay their salaries but they never seem to catch this type of s*** until someone owes them thousands of dollars and this is everytime! They always say "our mistake but you pay for it". Now I agree that he has a responsibility and that he should not be off the hook for this, but again if you are not a gas man or electrician how do you know something is wrong? In my opinion we should start holding MLG&W's feet to the fire about some of this crap that they pull because real people suffer behind their OOPS we should have caught it but we didn't so now you pay!!!

I feel that MLG&W is messing up big time. I feel that hard earning citzens have to pay, but whaen EDmond Ford didn't pay he got extensions and so on. I feel that MLG&W Should elect new Board Members and really try to get the job Done. I was listening last night when you said " MLG&W  ranked  last" Dang that must suck Memphis is already having a hard time getting people to live here but now the lights are jacked up. What problem will they have next?Water?Memphis needs to get it together. Besides that man is a senior citzen, how could he have known?

I think MLG,&W need to get their act together.One of our neighbors didn't know his wife wasn't paying the bill(he thought she was),and they cut him off.My husband and I paid the bill for him until he got paid,but I belive if his last name had been Ford,his lights would have never been turned off.

To Asiandream05:

As I stated on one of Cameron's other blogs about MLGW, Herein lies a BIG part of the problem:  MLGW's Board of Commissioners are mayoral appointees!  SURPRISED????   This little bit of info should explain A LOT.  You're going to have to get a new mayor to get this fixed.  Personally, I recommend its former president, Herman Morris.  He'll make sure the company gets fixed.  My husband worked for him and retired a year after Lee took over.  The garbage started when Lee took the reigns.

Then of course we have a part-time interim president and a part time Director.  What's wrong with this picture?  The biggest thing wrong is that they are Willie's guys.  Go figure!

Put this senior on a payment plan like they gave Edmund Ford or one like a dollar a month til he can pay it off. To expect a senior to come up with that much money is crazy. How many times have they overbilled or refused to refund overpayments?
It's their screw up.. deal with it...do they expect Joseph Lee to give some of his money & benefits back. The mayor's buddy siphoned all those big bucks not counting all the other appointed people in big salary jobs. Let them make up the difference. Seniors do good to exist at all on what they get. MLGW considers you as as an account number not a HUMAN BEING unless you are connected to the right people in city government.

I think James works for MLGW and that is what they told me too.
I have had three outrageous bills and so have all my neighbors in my neighborhood. MLGW has such a bad relationship with it's meter readers that it actually has no idea what your bill is! Really! It is the equivalent of a sociopath. They are over-billing targeted areas of town because they know they don't have enough money to sue.
I made them print out my bills and to the administrators amazement they were ALL GUESTIMATED SINCE THE ACCOUNT WAS OPENED!!! I know I open the gate for the reader every month! The meter reader wrote me a letter stating that. The administrator called to threaten him right in front of my face.

NO, he should not pay a nickel of that bill!
This is MLGW's fault 100%, They read his meter every month and should have sent someone out when they noticed the problem the first month. They didn't. They do with me and they still get my bill wrong by $1000 or more! They should have replaced his meter four years ago if there was a problem, but, you can't get them to do that in Memphis no matter what.
MLGW is set up to steal your money such that there is nothing you can do about it and this blog is as close to doing nothing as actually being doing nothing about it.
It won't do any good to go to the media either. They will not do anything about it either.
I have been told by MLGW employees that they target certain areas repeatedly for overcharging and hide it by "guesstimating"  and they get billions.
Where are the federal government or state utility regulators? HELLO!!!!