I bought a house on October 1, 1998 and still have not received my first electric bill. I called the electric company around December 1 and the woman at the electric company said, "we are upgrading our billing computer systems, and everything is a mess. You will get a bill soon".

My guess is that, I will get my first bill (for a $1,000+) on 12/31/1999 and have no electric the next day.

Anybody else having billing problems yet?

-- Bill (bill@microsoft.com), December 30, 1998

Answers

Well Bill, you are not the Lone Ranger this time, I found this story at www.year2000.com under press clippings. Also you should start recording you meter readings, in case you get an "estimated" bill in which case --------ooouch! Good Luck

" $7 MILLION BILL BLAMED ON COMPUTER GLITCH Ann Brack-Johnson

December 29, 1998 OSWEGO The Millennium Bug has struck early in Oswego.

Village President Budd Bieber said that while ComEd was transferring its records to address the Y2K computer issue for 2000, the power company sent the village a bill for more than $7 million in mid- December as a "corrected" bill for two erroneous August bills of $29,000 and $26,000.

Oswego officials said they have been in touch with ComEd officials, who are trying to resolve the computer glitches. Oswego received the first power bills for the month of August just three weeks ago, a fee that usually runs about $11,000, Bieber said.

Mike Franklin, public affairs director for ComEd in the Greater Fox Valley Region, said that only about 1 percent of their customers are affected by the computer glitches. But "when you have 3.5 million customers, 1 percent can be a big problem," he said.

Franklin said ComEd installed its new computer system in July, and it is Y2K-compatible. He also said the utility is "somewhat behind" in billing some customers. "

-- John Callon (jcallon@ gate.net), December 30, 1998.

My husband works for a major utility company and the word is to expect problems with billing. They haven't began any testing and "time is of the essence, because NEXT YEAR year the utility needs to VERIFY that all of the computer systems can work together after changes are made to them." "But there are no absolutes in this game. PG&E's Year 2000 readiness depends, in part, upon the readiness of all the other organizations and systems that make up PG&E's business chain." PG&E WEEK, October 5, 1998.

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), December 30, 1998.

The customer service system that ComEd installed is the CustomerOne system by Anderson Consulting. They are currently suing Anderson over this sytem and it's shortcomings. ComEd has had to resurrect their 35 year old commercial billing system for their large commercial customers. There are several other utility companies that have or are installing this system to replace non-compliant older customer service systems (Southern Company, MidAmerican Energy, Niagra Mohawk, etc.) It is not an easy system to install or modify and there is no verification that it is compliant other than the re-assurances by Anderson. This may be a case of the fix being worse than the original problem.

-- just me (none@nomail.com), December 30, 1998.

Yeah - you have to watch out when you buy vertical market software. Every IS dept. in the country has horror stories to tell about outside vendors.

But you can't blame everything on Y2K problems - we will have software troubles with us always - example - some years back - years before anyone was doing Y2K remediation - the IRS sent me a check for $118K plus change. Never did figure out how that happened - but it got my ugly mug on the local news.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), December 30, 1998.

Did you cash the check Paul?

-- Bill (bill@microsoft.com), December 30, 1998.

Paul, I usually keep quiet around here, but I had to ask this. It seems like every time someone raises a Y2K issue -- no matter how thoughtful, factual, or considered (or not) -- you respond with a comment about how "that's not Y2K related" or "that doesn't mean it will be that bad" or some such thing.

This is not really directed at you personally, so please don't be offended: What would it take for you to revise your opinion? I ask this question to anyone who continually apologizes for the case that Y2K is merely a bump in the road (or less).

Thanks,
Scott

-- Scott Johnson (scojo@yahoo.com), December 30, 1998.