Complaint Review: American Utility Management

My experience with AUM has been decent until recently when my bill came and showed a $110 increase from the previous month. My AUM bill has always averaged $60/month, so $170 is a major difference. I live in the Village Park Apartments in Palatine, IL, and I received a letter from the office on my door about two months ago informing all residents that supposedly AUM was incorrectly billing the entire complex over the past year, and now they are expecting all residents to pay a lot more each month to make up for their undercharges over last year.

This is a completely bogus and fishy business practice and I cannot believe that they are allowed to do this. I understand that AUM is just the billing company that the gas/water utility company goes through, so I don't know if the mistake was truly AUM or the actual utility company, but either way, this is a ridiculous situation and I have heard of residents here actually moving out over this whole thing. Their customer service respresentatives have also not been helpful at all with this matter and tell me I have to talk to the complex, but the complex says I have to talk to AUM, and when AUM wouldn't help, I asked for the utility company information to contact them directly, and they wouldn't even tell me what company the utilities are provided through, so it's like theres no one to help and no one wants to deal with it or help hard working customers like myself who have always paid on time and in full in te past. They aren't even willing to waive the $7 late fees I've gotten every month because I can't afford to pay off my account in full now. A rep actually said to me "oh well, unfortunately this is a lose lose situation for you and I can't do anything to help with the charges or late fees".  If I buy something at a store and it rings up cheaper than it should be, the store isn't going to call me months later and tell me "oh btw, because of our mistake, we are going to charge your card again because we didn't charge you correctly the first time".

No one should run a business this way and whatever mistake the utility company made is their own responsibility and they need to eat the loss themselves! I have actually been advised to not make any more payments (as I will be moving out in 2.5 months anyway), and the extra money I've paid over these two months covers the amount I'm supposed to be charged for the rest of my time living here. I really hope someone files a suit or something over this because this isn't right at all for them to screw people over like this and just expect them to pull extra money out of nowhere.