My client moved into a new office space on February 8th and Austin Energy started service the same day. Got the first bill yesterday covering February 8-29 (22 days). The energy charges look correctly prorated but the customer charge is $25.80 instead of the expected $18.60 (22/30 * $25.34 from Schedule COM). Called Austin Energy and they said partial month customer charges are "rounded to the nearest billing increment." That's not in their tariff anywhere. Has anyone else seen this creative interpretation of proration rules?
Austin Energy partial month billing - something's fishy
Vanessa, I haven't dealt with Austin Energy but Avista here in Spokane pulled something similar last year. They claimed partial month customer charges had a "minimum billing threshold" that wasn't in the published tariff. Turned out to be a billing system default that nobody bothered to remove when they updated their rates. Got it fixed after showing them their own tariff language required daily proration. Save yourself time and go straight to their tariff filing.
I've seen this "rounding to billing increments" excuse with Ameren here in Illinois. It's usually code for "our billing system can't handle proper proration so we just make up numbers." The worst case was a client who moved in on the 29th of a 31-day month. Got charged the full monthly customer charge for 3 days of service. Ameren said their system "rounds up for partial months under 15 days." Complete fiction - not one word about it in their tariff.
Chuck's right about the billing system limitations. Entergy Arkansas does the same thing - their computer system apparently can't calculate daily proration for customer charges so they use "standard partial billing periods" of 10, 15, 20, or 30 days. If your actual period is 22 days, they bill you for 30. If it's 18 days, they bill for 20. Saves them programming costs but rips off customers. I always demand they show me where this is authorized in their filed rates.
Thanks everyone. I pulled Austin Energy's tariff filing from the Austin City Council records and there's nothing about "billing increments" or rounding rules. Section 6.1.3 clearly states customer charges "shall be prorated on a daily basis for partial billing periods." Filed a formal complaint this morning. The $7.20 difference isn't much for one account but if they're doing this systematically it's probably thousands of dollars in illegal overcharges monthly.