My question involves landlord-tenant law in the State of: NC
So my fiancee and I were living in a quadruplex. All 4 apartments had the old-school radiator-style heaters in each room that were connected to a central boiler in the basement. This boiler was gas heated and supplied the heat for all 4 apartments, but it wasn't until speaking with our neighbors that we realized each apartment was not separately metered and so our bills were exactly the same regardless of usage; the management company simply took the gas bill and split it 4 ways and sent us an invoice.
Both us and another neighbor have held off on paying any of these gas bills because we feel that there has to be some sort of legal issue with billing us this way. Over several months we dropped our thermostat down quite a bit to save some money, and we came to find out that it made little difference since obviously we are barely dropping the overall gas usage for all 4 apartments.
We are in Greensboro, NC and I have been looking for some sort of city or state statute that would make it more clear for us. Since we are in the process of moving out, the management company told us they would take the balance out of our security deposit. During my googling, I found that in many places it is illegal to bill tenants for utilities like this without tracking their exact usage.
Does anyone have any experience in dealing with something like this?

