Before I signed my lease, the property management company just rambled off all the utilities that would be by the tenant. Upon signing my lease, I agreed and signed off on being responsible for paying Heat, Electric, and Hot Water. I moved in in July. Now that I have been there for the winter months, my heating bill has gone up $40-$45 each month. After calling the Energy Billing Systems company, I now learned that our heat & hot water is pooled for the whole building and broken down by occupancy and square footage of your apartment. Is this a legal or acceptable way of charging the tenant for this utility? And shouldn't they have explained this at the time of signing/moving in. One unit is exactly like mine, and started with 2 or 3 people living in it. And now there are at least 8 people that the management company or energy billing co. is not aware of. So all their usage is increasing my bill. Any advise?

Any advise?Hello mek:

Tell me what you want to DO, and I'll advise you. You're NOT going to get your own bill. You're NOT going to get the landlord to let you out of the lease. You're NOT going to get a reduction in your bills.

Are you thinking that the landlord was responsible for telling you this, and because he didn't, you can get out of your lease?? Is that it?? You gottal tell me what you want to do.

excon

I will be leaving at the end of my one year lease because of many reasons. What I was asking is, how is this a fair practice... to bill other people for other household's usage when they have several unaccounted for people living with them.

The problem is that you agreed to pay "pooled" utilities. It's not the management's fault that the other tenants moved in extra people... unless of course, they knew about it.

If the management is unaware of the extra occupants, why don't you inform them? Explain it just as you did here: the other tenants should be contributing more, not just living for free.