{"id":7155,"date":"2015-07-24T20:47:06","date_gmt":"2015-07-25T03:47:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/?p=7155"},"modified":"2015-10-02T20:47:44","modified_gmt":"2015-10-03T03:47:44","slug":"4500-fortis-bill-for-house-which-isnt-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/?p=7155","title":{"rendered":"$4,500 Fortis bill for house which isn’t there"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Adam Proskiw \u00a0– Infotel News<\/div>\n
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Gary Fong was sent a $4,500 bill from Fortis for power used by a building that burned down more than six months ago.<\/div>\n
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(ADAM PROSKIW \/InfoTel Multimedia)<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
July 24, 2015 – 6:30 PM<\/div>\n

KELOWNA \u2013 A world-famous photographer who lives part time in Ellison says Fortis B.C. has overbilled him more than $7,000 for a house that burned to the ground in January.<\/p>\n

Gary Fong,\u00a0the inventor of the Lightsphere<\/a>,\u00a0lives in LA most of the year. On January 11\u00a0his luxury cabin near Kelowna burned down<\/a>\u00a0yet he says his bills for the property have actually gone up. This month he received one for $4,500 for the billing period between May 19 to July 17.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is really blatant,\u201d he says. \u201cThe house isn\u2019t even there so it defies any type of reasoning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fong tried contacting Fortis several times but each time their response has been the same.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey say too bad, so sad. Pay your bill or we\u2019ll shut off your power,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s no way to dispute this because they have a monopoly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fong says he\u2019s been complaining to Fortis for years since he\u2019d routinely get bills of roughly $1,800 every two months, whether he is living in the Kelowna area house or not.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d turn off the air conditioning and the lights, but the bills would come in even higher than when we\u2019re there,\u201d he says. \u201cI was just too busy to deal with it before, but when we got the latest bill for $4,500, not only was there no power going to the panel, there hasn\u2019t been anybody on the property in months.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fong, who has an estimated net worth of around $20 million, admits he could pay the bill, but decided to go public with the overcharges to help others.<\/p>\n

\u201c$1,800 is the mortgage for a house,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m doing this for all the people who can\u2019t prove (this is happening). They suspect it,\u00a0they\u2019re going broke, they can\u2019t feed their kids<\/a>, but they can\u2019t prove they\u2019re being overcharged. They need proof and I think this is the smoking gun.”<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m from the United States and there you can\u2019t bill for something you didn\u2019t use or it\u2019s fraud and it\u2019s a big deal,\u201d he says. \u201cA mechanic can\u2019t bill for a muffler they didn\u2019t install. This bill says we used this many kilowatt hours, but there\u2019s no house.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fortis spokesperson Nicole Bogdanovich will only say the utility is currently investigating the issue.<\/p>\n

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\"A<\/a><\/p>\n
A screen capture of the Fortis B.C. e-bill submitted by Gary Fong.<\/div>\n
Image Credit: Contributed<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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To contact the reporter for this story, email Adam Proskiw at aproskiw@infonews.ca or call 250-718-0428. To contact the editor, email mjones@infonews.ca or call 250-718-2724.<\/p>\n

News from \u00a9 InfoTel News Ltd, 2015<\/div>\n
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http:\/\/infotel.ca\/newsitem\/4500-fortis-bill-for-house-which-isnt-there\/it21539<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Proskiw \u00a0– Infotel News \u00a0 Gary Fong was sent a $4,500 bill from Fortis for power used by a building that burned down more than six months ago. (ADAM PROSKIW \/InfoTel Multimedia) July 24, 2015 – 6:30 PM KELOWNA \u2013 A world-famous photographer who lives part time in Ellison says Fortis B.C. has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[306,17,103,302,102,50,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-billing","category-bc","category-canada","category-disconnected","category-fortisbc","category-kelowna","category-smart-meter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7155"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7157,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7155\/revisions\/7157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}