Call for Action team helps couple cut $3,000 bill from Consumers Energy

(WXYZ) - Cooking a hearty breakfast inside her Lake Orion home, Carolyn Skalnek depends on natural gas to power her gas stove - gas provided by Consumers Energy.

Carolyn and her husband Steve have been Consumers Energy customers for better than 20-years and they have always paid their bills on time. But this past summer they suddenly got a gas bill they never expected.

“Well, we get this letter in the mail demanding that we pay $3,000 up front, before any work is done, to move our natural gas line several feet. They said because we had build part of our garage over that gas line, by about a foot or so,” Carolyn says. “But at the time, the building inspector signed off on it, so we thought we were absolutely fine.”

Fifteen-years ago Carolyn and her husband built an addition on to their garage and in the process the Skalneks put that garage about 10-inches over the Consumers Energy gas line to the house.

To make matters even worse, the Skalneks had just finished spending $10,000 to completely replace their septic system.  Now they were being hit with that $3,000.00 bill.

 Carolyn called Consumers Energy, asking if they could pay the $3,000 bill after the work was completed, but Consumers said absolutely not.

 That’s when Carolyn called the Call for Action team for help.

We immediately contracted top officials at Consumers Energy to negotiate a solution and Consumers agreed to talk to the outside contractors that would do the actual moving of the gas line.

In the end, instead of paying that $3,000 fee in advance, Carolyn and Steve wound up paying just under $800 - a whopping $2,200 less than what they would have been charged had they not come to us for help.

”I’m very thankful Bill, that you and Channel  7 have this powerful team that is always looking out for the little guy, we need you so much,” Carolyn says.