A local family almost had to spend this arctic cold night with no heat or electricity and it's all because of a mistake made by DTE Energy.
It's something that would make any paying DTE customer hot under the collar: having the heat shutoff for non-payment of the bill.
It's a situation that almost left a southwest Detroiter in the cold.
On the coldest night so far this year DTE gave Richard Walker the cold shoulder after seizing his gas meters and shutting off his heat.
So what did Richard do to deserve the shutoff? Absolutely nothing.
He's been paying his bill on time since he moved in last November. Turns out DTE admits it failed to register the meters.
But when DTE came back to replace the meters, Richard says they didn't even get out the truck.
So Richard called 7 Action News. We quickly confirmed the mistake.
DTE told Richard the soonest they could return to the house would be Wednesday afternoon.
However, not long after we began looking into the story DTE said they were on their way.
The utility showed up around 8:30 p.m. and the heat was back on soon after that.
