INDIANAPOLIS — Hundreds of Indianapolis families are facing financial issues after a technical error from Indianapolis Power & Light that caused the utility company to take duplicate payments from customer bank accounts.
The fees have been adding up for Stephanie Kopp throughout her ordeal with IPL. It started last Friday when she went online to pay her electric bill. The first time, her balance didn't change, so she did it again thinking it didn't go through.
"I know it takes a while to process the payment, but I kept on having this bad feeling that I probably double paid," Kopp said.
Her suspicions were correct, but she couldn't do anything about the double-charge because IPL's offices were closed. First thing Monday morning, she called and was promised the money, insufficient fund fees included, would go back into her account on one or two days.
"Every day, it's one to two days when you call, no matter what, even if it's already been one or two days," Kopp said. "To know that $274 is just floating around in limbo somewhere, I don't know if I'm ever going to get that back from them."
Early Wednesday morning, anxious to see if her money was there, Kopp logged into her account.
"I wanted to throw up," she said. "Are you kidding me? What came out, I went through and they had taken it out again."
After that third charge, Kopp had $574 gone in five days. Now she's letting her bank handle the issue.
"I didn't want to wake up tomorrow and have another $274 taken out instead of that being put in," Kopp said. "I didn't want it to keep going, so Chase had to run it as a fraudulent charge."
What makes it even worse, Kopp said, is that it's the holiday season. This has probably ruined last-minute shopping for several families as other people have contacted RTV6 saying they can't pay other bills because of these duplicate charges.
As for IPL, their spokeswoman said in an email they are sorry for the inconvenience this issue has caused customers and everyone should expect their refunds in one-to-two business days.
