Nayeli Torres and her family had to shut down their auto repair business while they got to the bottom of the shockingly large electric bill.
INDIANAPOLIS — Nayeli Torres said her family business, Tapia’s Tires and Oil, has been open on Kentucky Avenue since 2024.
“We do oil changes, we do brakes, rim repairs, a little bit of everything,” Torres said.
But in January, Torres said the shop had to temporarily shut down after receiving a surprising electric bill.
“With other services and taxes and all that stuff it was $15,262, and regular, we owed $177. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It’s unbelievable,” Torres said.
Torres said she and her husband started calling AES Indiana, trying to figure out what was happening.
“They all said the same thing. So, we just kept calling and calling see if somebody would tell us something different, but we never got anything different, but it has to get paid, and our electricity got disconnected,” Torres said.
She said the interruption affected both her family and her employees.
“That’s how I feed my children, and we need gas every day. It was a huge impact. We didn’t know what to tell our employees, and they were also depending on getting the check to pay their own bills,” Torres said.
Torres said she kept pushing for answers and was finally able to get a supervisor on the line, who confirmed the bill was the result of human error.
“She resolved everything, and she cleared the $15,000 plus the $177 that we owed to them,” Torres said.
Mallory Swank with AES said she cannot speak specifically about this account, but said Torres did the right thing by calling.
Torres said she’s sharing her story because she’s heard from other customers, especially in the Hispanic community, who struggle to get answers when they notice changes or irregularities on their bills. She said many of them are even afraid to ask questions. She wants to encourage them.
“I have several, several people reaching out, saying, ‘What can we do? Our bills are so high,'” Torres said. “When we call they just say that they can’t do anything about it, and if they don’t pay, they’re going to be with no electricity.”
Swank said customers have several ways to get help with their bills.
“If you do need to speak to an agent, there are many different options for you. We have bilingual agents. They’re not there on every shift, but they’re there for most shifts. They’ll be happy to speak with you if the language is a little bit of a barrier. We also have a 24/7 translation service, so we just encourage customers to call,” Swank said.
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Swank said they first encourage customers to look closely at their bill.
“We want customers to remember, we’re in a period of high usage. You’re looking at not so much the amount on the bill, but look at your usage. Does that match? There are multiple ways that you can do that,” Swank said.
She said the best way for customers to track their usage is by creating an online account with AES Indiana. From there, customers can use a tool called Power View, where they can see their electricity usage day-to-day, week-to-week or possibly year over year.
“You’ll be able to track how much you used, maybe last year at this time, so you can kind of compare, see if it’s close, if your usage is close, and if you find a discrepancy, that’s when we encourage our customers to reach out to us,” Swank said. “We want to fix this problem. If there is one, we want to be able to talk to them, or even walk them through, maybe their usage.”
Torres said the shop is now back open and running.
“I’m thankful that we were able to resolve this, that we’re back in business,” Torres said.
AES Indiana wants to remind customers they can’t change the base rates they charge month to month and that a lot of bill fluctuations are due to changes in usage.
