I’ve Been Paying My Neighbors Power Bill For Over 2 Years

As the title suggests, I just found out that I’ve been paying my neighbors power bill for over two years due to the power company (Duke Energy) putting my neighbors meter under my account. My wife and I moved into our new construction home in 2022 and over the past year and a half have noticed that our usage didn’t seem to match what we were paying. This came to a head in January of 2024 when we received a $500(!) power bill (this was after a $300 bill the month prior which we attributed to the cold and rising rates). We immediately contacted the power company and asked if it is possible that we were paying our neighbors bill instead of ours (they have their lights on 24/7). The power company was very adamant that that was highly unlikely and that we should have a home energy inspection. At the home energy inspection, the guy seemed confused because our meter was working fine and said that we should have someone check out our HVAC. We called an HVAC company to come inspect our unit and they let us know that there was a leak due to poor welding (done during construction) and our unit was low by about 3 pounds of refrigerant. In total we paid about $500 for the HVAC company to come and inspect and refill the unit. The next month the bill went down to $300 so we thought that fixed the issue. Fast forward to today when our power went out around 1pm. I was at work at the time and my wife and 7 month old daughter were at home. We’ve had issues with the power going out in the neighborhood before (I’m talking at least 6 times since we have moved in) so it wasn’t immediately a concern to us. I went to check the outage map and thought it was strange that there were no reported outages in our neighborhood. I submitted an outage request around 3:30pm. I left work around 4pm and by the time I got home around 4:30pm my Duke energy app didn’t reference my outage. I called Duke and they seemed confused because my meter was still ‘pinging’ back to them that we were connected. They asked me to check my breaker so we checked and that wasn’t the issue. They submitted a ticket and I received a call shortly after from their dispatch team. They asked me to look at the meter on the outside of my house and everything seemed normal until they asked me to confirm my meter number. I read him my meter number and he said, “uh that isn’t the number I have.” We asked him what number he had and he told us the meter number that was tied to our account and it sure did not match the meter number on our house. So my wife went to check our neighbors meter because we’ve always had this suspicion that we have been paying their bill. It turns out that we have in fact been paying their power bill for the WHOLE TIME WE’VE LIVED HERE. This was only discovered because our neighbor has apparently not been paying their (really our) bill and Duke Energy came to shut their power off but ended up shutting our power off. Thankfully it didn’t take them too much time to send a crew to turn our power back on but now I am not sure what to do. We’ve previously brought up our concerns about us potentially paying our neighbors bill. They’ve had people check on their side and at our meter but they seemed to miss the mismatched meter numbers. We’ve definitely been “overpaying” for electricity because we are incredibly mindful of our usage after getting those giant bills last winter (that weren’t even ours to begin with). What should I do next? Do I need to get an attorney? Or is this something I can work out with Duke Power?