Ian from Davenport. Had my first significant dispute loss last month. Filed a rate class challenge for a light manufacturing client — thought the industrial rate clearly applied. Utility disagreed, PUC sided with the utility, and my client ended up with no recovery and a slightly strained relationship with their account rep. Sharing this because most threads here are about wins. What did others learn from their first significant loss?
Challenged a rate class assignment and lost — what I learned
Kay from Reno. Thank you for sharing this. Losses are real and the community needs to talk about them. What was the utility's winning argument?
They argued the client's operation did not meet the definition of continuous industrial process in the tariff. My client runs two 8-hour shifts with a 4-hour break between them. The utility said that gap disqualified them from continuous process classification.
Kay again. That is a legitimate tariff interpretation question. In hindsight what would you do differently?
I would have researched how the utility had applied that definition to other similar accounts before filing. I later found two other manufacturers in the territory with identical shift patterns on the industrial rate. Had I known that before the dispute I could have used it as precedent.
Bob from Akron. The lesson about researching how the utility applies tariff language to comparable accounts is one I keep learning in different forms. The tariff as written and the tariff as applied are sometimes different things.
Bob that framing is exactly right. I read the tariff as written and felt confident. The utility had a consistent interpretation that was narrower than the text and I did not know it going in.
Kay one more time. Did you tell your client upfront that the dispute might not succeed?
I did include language in the engagement about no guarantees but I probably communicated more confidence than I should have. Another lesson — calibrate your language to your actual certainty level, not your hope level.