HARRISBURG, Pa. — Note: The video is from Jan. 31.
The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) said Wednesday it will evaluate and consider a joint settlement that addresses widespread consumer billing issues by PPL Electric Utilities Corporation (PPL) proposed by the commission's independent Bureau of Investigation and Enforcement and PPL.
The proposed settlement includes payment of a $1 million civil penalty and PPL’s agreement to absorb more than $16 million in related costs, the PUC said in a press release.
Earlier this year, the PUC launched a comprehensive investigation into billing issues impacting PPL customers in response to large numbers of consumer calls and complaints about unusually high or low estimated bills, missing monthly bills, and the lack of adequate customer service support resulting in consumers being unable to reach PPL Call Center representatives to discuss their billing concerns.
The matter was referred to the PUC’s independent Bureau of Investigation and Enforcement (I&E) – which enforces the state public utility code and PUC regulations and has the authority to bring enforcement actions to the Commission, the PUC said.
Based on data obtained from PPL during I&E’s investigation, the billing issues originated in December 2022, when PPL discovered that customer meter data was not transferring from the utility’s meter data management software to their customer service system. The inability to transfer actual meter data backed up normal customer billing operations and resulted in sending estimated December 2022 bills, according to the PUC.
Later, human error caused additional incorrect bills to be issued, while some customers received no bills, and issues with bill estimation resulted in wildly inaccurate bills, the PUC said.
According to the proposed joint settlement, more than 48,000 PPL accounts received no bills during one or more months between December 2022 and April 2023 billing periods, and during that same period more than 91,000 unique PPL accounts received no bills, the PUC said.
Additionally, between December 2022 and January 2023, nearly 795,000 estimated bills were issued by PPL, and a total of more than 860,000 estimated bills were issued between December 2022 and May 2023, according to the PUC.
An analysis of estimated bills issued by PPL revealed that 67.31% (261,104 customers) of the bills had an estimate differing from the customers’ actual usage of 10% or greater, according to the PUC.
Of these bills, one-third indicated an estimate that varied from the actual by more than 25%, the PUC said. And nearly 48,000 customer bills were based on an estimate differing from actual usage by more than 50%.
Further, over 82,000 estimated bills were impacted by missing or inaccurate supply charges – resulting in a process where PPL canceled the initial estimated bills and rebilled accounts to correct errors – generating consumer confusion and creating a complicated tangle of bills that took months to unravel, according to the PUC.
Finally, customers who attempted to contact PPL about billing issues were faced with extremely long wait times or were unable to reach the utility at all, the PUC said. Call center data from the period between January and April 2023 showed that 41% of calls to PPL were abandoned without customers being able to reach a representative.
Based on the information developed during this investigation and the concerns identified by I&E, both PPL and I&E have proposed a settlement to resolve this matter, the PUC said.
Under the terms of the terms of the proposed settlement, PPL will pay a $1 million civil penalty, along with a series of corrective actions in response to these billing issues, the PUC said. Additionally, PPL has voluntarily agreed to absorb more than $16 million in additional costs related to rectifying their billing issues, including:
- Approximately $2.3 million in voluntarily waived late fees;
- Approximately $7.8 million of additional bad debt expense arising out of the voluntary service termination moratorium;
- Forgoing collection of approximately $1.7 million from customers who were underbilled in the estimation true-up process;
- An additional approximately $3.7 million of unplanned costs in engaging external vendors;
- And approximately $700,000 of unbudgeted employee overtime expenses.
Per the proposed settlement, PPL will not seek to recover any of those related costs in future rate cases or in any other manner.
The proposed joint settlement has been submitted for review and consideration by the PUC Commissioners, who will make a final determination in this matter.