Pa. Public Utility Commission to consider joint settlement regarding billing issues worth millions

Taylor Spirito
·2 min read

The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) said they will evaluate and consider a joint settlement that addresses widespread customer billing issues by PPL Electric Utilities Corporation (PPL).

According to PUC, the settlement would include a payment of $1 million civil penalty and PPL’s agreement to absorb more than $16 million in related costs.

PUC said the organization launched an investigation into PPL earlier this year after receiving a large number 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.

In an investigation, PUC said the billing issues started in Dec. 2022, when they found that customer meter data was not transferring from the utility’s meter data management software to their customer service system. Human error also played a factor in the incorrect bills.

According to the proposed joint settlement, more than 48,000 PPL accounts received no bills during one or more months between Dec. 2022 and April 2023, and during that same period more than 91,000 unique PPL accounts received no bills.

PUC also said over 82,000 estimated bills were impacted by missing or inaccurate supply charges.

The joint settlement would see PPL paying a $1 million civil penalty as well as absorbing the following related costs:

  • 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.

The joint settlement is currently under review by the PUC Commissioners.

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