Time Warner accidentally sends out inflated bills in Kansas City area

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - If you received a statement from Time Warner Cable in the Kansas City area, make sure your bill is accurate.

The cable company is working with a new billing system, and some customers were sent statements that said they owed more than double what they should.

Peri Kemp got an inflated bills Thursday afternoon, and she was relieved to find out it was a mistake.

"It about to give me a heart attack because this is a lot of money when you're on a fixed income," she said.

Kemp keeps track of her cable bill every month and pays it online through her bank. She normally pays around $170, but the statement that came in the mail said the amount was $396.81 -- and that she was late with her September payment.

She called her bank before she called Time Warner. When she did call the cable company, she told them she had proof that she paid every bill they'd ever sent her.

The representative told her she has nothing to worry about.

"The woman on the phone tells me that 'We were testing our accounting system and we were creating bogus bills through this test. These were never supposed to be mailed out,'" she said.

Kemp hopes Time Warner learns from this mistake.

"To me, it's bad business you are using real names, real account numbers and somehow they were put in envelopes and sent out," she said.

A Time Warner spokesperson released this statement:

Time Warner Cable is proactively reaching out to a few local customers who received a bill statement indicating an incorrect balance amount. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.