Despite efforts to improve its billing system, Seattle City Light continues to struggle with misread meters and other errors that contributed to at least $1.1 million in underbillings in the last six months of last year.

One company, Qwest, was not billed for nearly $590,000 because of billing errors, said City Light in response to a public-records request by The Seattle Times.

That was the largest underbilled customer, but 49 accounts, mostly commercial ones, were underbilled at least $1,000 while 93 customers were overbilled at least $1,000. The overbillings totaled at least $820,000. Those who were overbilled will have their accounts credited.

The Times asked for all billing errors over $1,000 between July 1 and Dec. 31. Errors under $1,000 were not included.

In the first few months of last year, City Light was inundated with complaints of overbillings, and many of the accounts of the 316 customers who said they were overbilled were later adjusted. The problem surfaced last April when a Magnolia resident received an electric bill for more than $2,200. After The Times published her story, City Light was deluged with complaints from other customers. Some of the mistakes were blamed on a computer-software filter — used to catch abnormal bills — which was not working.

Later, City Light revealed that a dozen companies were underbilled $1.2 million over the previous year because of defective meters and billing errors.

The largest was a bill to Boeing, which had been underbilled nearly $500,000 because of a miswired meter.

But the more recent Qwest error is larger than the Boeing one and involved two separate accounts, one a Qwest facility on Lenora Street and the other on East Pike Street. Qwest is one of City Light's top 20 customers.

What happened with Qwest, said Chuck Peterson, an account executive with City Light, is that the two meters had been replaced but mistakenly didn't pick up most of the power usage, leading to the huge underbillings. One of the mistakes was detected by an audit of the meter, the other by Qwest, which called City Light wondering why its power bills were so low.

When meters are exchanged City Light tries to go back and audit accounts within 90 days, but that didn't happen with the Qwest bills, where the underbillings occurred in one of the meters for 15 months.

Qwest spokesman Michael Dunne said it found the error and would pay what it owes. He said Qwest was not angry with City Light over the mistake.

"They've been very gracious," said Peterson, who said the company can repay the money over the same period of time the error occurred.

City Light also underbilled the Shoreline School District by $32,000. That created a problem for the strapped district, said spokeswoman Marjorie Ledell.

"It was an unbudgeted expense in bad financial times," said Ledell, who said the district doesn't dispute the bill and will pay it.

City Light also underbilled the Martín de Porres shelter on Alaskan Way South by $24,000. Shelter director Bob Goetschius blamed it on a paperwork mix-up and said the shelter would pay the bill.

"That's life. We owe it," he said.

Meter errors caused KSTW-TV Viacom to be underbilled $11,000. Station officials blamed it on construction work that obscured the meter and led to incorrect readings.

Joan Walters, City Light deputy superintendent, said the billing errors over the past 18 months are unusual and a new system now in place should substantially reduce them. She said the utility looked at all bills that were adjusted in 2002 and they amounted to 3 percent of the total bills generated. She said City Light reads about 3 million meters each year.

Specifically, she said, City Light is replacing meters in hard-to-read locations. The new meters will be read by a new radio-frequency device that can be read from the sidewalk. This, she said, should guard against incorrect readings.

She said City Light is also working to eliminate backlogs in meter exchanges, and the utility is doing a better job of keeping on the 90-day audit program to make sure meters are recording electricity use properly.

"This is a fact of life when you have a system with a lot of mechanical parts," she said.

Walters said she's not aware that any of the 47 underbilled customers are disputing their bill. She said those customers will be allowed to repay the money over the same period as the underbilling.

She didn't know how many of the customers have paid the bills.

Seattle Times

-- Anonymous, March 13, 2003