Washington Gas Light Co. said yesterday that it believes it underbilled about 22,000 customers and overbilled 15,000 by 12 percent over the past three to five years. The company said it plans to collect amounts due and credit overpayments.

The utility told some of the affected customers last week that they will have three years to pay undercharges, interest-free, on their monthly bills or will receive monthly credits, with interest, until any amount overcharged is returned.

The wrongly billed customers will see additions or subtractions from their bills, with the amounts varying widely depending on the amount of natural gas used and whether they live in Virginia, Maryland or the District.

Washington Gas said the company's billing records didn't accurately reflect the pressure of the gas entering some customers' homes.

Jim White, the utility's vice president for consumer affairs, said most of those affected are homeowners. A company survey indicated that 26,000 of the customers are in Virginia, 9,550 in Maryland and 1,460 in the District, he said.

White said that for a residential customer who spends about $1,000 a year on gas, the amount owed or to be credited may total $600 in Virginia and $360 in Maryland and the District. The reason for the difference, he said, is that bills can be corrected for five years under Virginia's utility laws, but Maryland and D.C. laws permit corrections only over three years.

Thus, if a Virginia residential customer owed $600, $16.67 a month would be added to his gas bill for the next three years, while a $360 undercharge in Maryland or the District would increase a monthly bill by $10 during the payback period.

The company said it could not estimate the total amount of money involved in the billing errors, but based on the examples White cited it could be as much as $19.6 million.

Customers already identified as having errors in their bills started receiving letters last weekend from Gerard Fix, the utility's manager of account reconciliation, saying they were either underbilled or overbilled by 12 percent because of a "misclassification of the type of service provided." White said they will be notified in March of the exact amounts involved.

"We regret and apologize for this error," Fix wrote. "The error was administrative only, and did not affect the safe delivery of natural gas to your home."

The letter did not explain what the misclassification was but invited customers to call 703-750-4373 for an explanation.

Elizabeth Owen, a retired lawyer who lives in a large Great Falls house and received one of the letters announcing an underbilling, said her Washington Gas bill averages about $200 a month.

"It sounds like a retroactive rate hike," she said. "You can't do that. I pay based on a [meter] reading. I definitely will contest it."

Another customer, Ron Fornatora of Ashburn, said: "More than anything, I was irritated they'd send this kind of letter to long-standing customers who have an excellent payment record. It doesn't go into any detail on the administrative error."

White said it will take Washington Gas about 2 1/2 years to check the gas pressure entering the homes and businesses of its 900,000 customers and then check billing records to see if they have been classified correctly as receiving the higher- or lower-pressure gas.

White said that almost all meters are calibrated for customers receiving their gas at 0.2 pounds per square inch but that in recent years more homes have been built with cheaper, narrower gas piping inside to receive gas at two pounds per square inch. As a result, some customers were billed for more or less gas than they used.

Customers have been underbilled if they have been receiving gas at two pounds per square inch but were billed as if the pressure was 0.2 pounds per square inch, White said. Conversely, he said that customers have been overbilled if they have been receiving gas at 0.2 pounds per square inch but billed at the rate for two pounds per square inch.

White said a customer first raised the pressure question with the utility in March and a check of the customer's house and billing records showed that the customer was being overbilled.

As a result, White said the utility in October and November checked the pressure of the gas entering 7,000 homes and businesses throughout the area against their billing records and found about 1,000 in error. Those were the customers it started notifying last week.

Based on that sample and the rate of errors it found, Washington Gas officials think 37,000 customers will be affected.

White said the company did not consider forgetting the past billing errors and simply correcting future bills because it would "not be a fair thing to the rest of the customers."

"The rates in place for all our customers are assumed to be correct," he said.

He said the firm set aside $1 million several months ago to cover the cost of the credits, since they will be paid sooner than the shortages will be collected. Ultimately the firm may collect more than it refunds, but White said that because of the thousands of properties yet to be tested it has no estimate of what the final amount may be.

White said the firm would not try to find customers who have moved in recent years, neither those who would owe nor those entitled to a refund.

Washington Post

-- Anonymous, December 19, 2001