HOUSTON – A Houston Community College student is struggling with the financial burden of an unusually high water bill, recently discovered that for the past two years, he may have been paying for his neighbor’s water usage instead of his own.
Zeeshan Hyder Memon, an international student living on a tight budget, had been confused for months about his escalating water bill. His monthly charges ranged from $100 to $700, despite living in a small two-bedroom apartment.
“It’s $500, 18,000 gallons of water are being dumped every month, which I’m not even consuming in my two-bedroom apartment,” he said. “I don’t even have an income.”
After repeatedly hiring plumbers to identify the issue, Memon learned that there was nothing wrong inside his apartment. The real problem? He wasn’t being billed for his own water usage—he was paying for his neighbor’s.
The confusion stemmed from crossed water meters. Memon and the plumbers suspected that his water meter had been swapped with the one assigned to his neighbor.
To verify this, Memon and KPRC 2’s Rilwan Balogun investigated by turning on faucets in his apartment while observing the two meters. They found that the meter running was not the one assigned to Memon, but his neighbor’s.
“We went upstairs and turned off the faucets in the kitchen and bathroom. When we went back downstairs, the meter that was running stopped immediately,” Balogun explained to a visibly frustrated Memon.
“So now you are you also seen that by yourself,” Memon told Balogun. “So, any random person would know that that’s my meter right. So how can these officials from the city of Houston [not] understand the basic problem.”
The City of Houston’s Public Works Department was made aware of the issue and sent out a technician while Balogun was present. After reviewing the situation, they confirmed that Memon’s water meter had been incorrectly linked to his neighbor’s account. They assured him that the mistake would be corrected, with future bills being adjusted based on average consumption data.
Memon will receive a credit on his next water bill to reflect the overcharges, and the city’s new remote reading devices will ensure that such errors do not occur again. Additionally, Memon has been signed up for water usage alerts to better track his consumption in the future.
The city has assured Memon that his future bills will reflect his actual usage, and any charges from previous months will be corrected using average consumption data. For now, Memon is hopeful that the ordeal will soon be behind him.
