Just caught a client's Ameren Missouri bill with a 34-day period instead of the usual 30-31. The bill jumped from $847 to $1,156 and they're claiming it's just the longer period. I've seen 32-33 days but 34 seems excessive. Anyone know if Missouri PSC has specific rules about maximum billing period length? The tariff I'm looking at says "approximately monthly" which feels vague.
Ameren Missouri 34-day billing period - can they do this?
Pam, I've seen Ameren go up to 35 days in extreme cases, usually around holidays or when they have meter reading issues. The key is whether they're charging demand based on the actual period or if they're using a normalized rate. Check if they applied any proration factors to the demand charges. In Tennessee, we see similar issues with TVA distributors.
Missouri allows up to 35 days between readings per PSC Rule 4 CSR 240-13.050. The issue isn't the period length but whether they're prorating correctly. Demand charges should be actual, not normalized. Energy charges can be tricky - make sure they're not double-charging for overlapping days from the previous period.
Jim, you're right about the overlapping days! I found they charged for March 1st on both the February and March bills. That alone accounts for $43 of the increase. The demand charge looks correct at 15.2 kW for the actual period. Still working through the energy calculations but this is a good catch.
We see this overlap issue constantly with AEP Indiana. Their billing system seems to have problems when meter readers get behind schedule. Always check the actual read dates against what they're charging for. I've found errors on about 30% of extended period bills. Document everything - the PSCs take this seriously when you can prove systematic errors.
Greg makes a good point about systematic errors. I had a case with OG&E where they were consistently double-billing the first day of extended periods. Took six months to get them to fix their billing system but we recovered over $3,200 for that client. The utility actually thanked us because it was affecting thousands of customers.
Thanks everyone! Final update: recovered $127 for the overlap charge plus they're crediting $89 for a proration error on the customer charge. Ameren was actually pretty cooperative once I showed them the calculation error. Filing this one under "wins" for March.
Nice work Pam! Always feels good when the utility admits the mistake and fixes it promptly. Those overlap charges are such an easy error to make but costly for customers who don't catch them.