Progress Energy error will lead to supplemental bills for nearly 90,000

Nearly 90,000 Progress Energy customers began receiving calls from the utility Tuesday with a mea culpa: Sorry, but due to a company error, we didn't bill you enough this month.

So expect another bill soon. The higher bill is not a new set of charges, but rather costs that should have been factored into the first bill.

Because of the error, some $900,000 worth of utility costs did not get billed to about 5 percent of the utility's 1.6 million customers across the state. These are customers who received their bills at the start of February.

"It's very rare that we have a billing error," said Suzanne Grant, a spokeswoman for Progress Energy. "We're taking steps to correct the problem so it doesn't happen again in the future."

On some bills, Progress Energy left off a rate adjustment that went into effect in July. The rate adjustment line item — $4.41 per 1,000 kilowatt hours of electric usage — is scheduled to be shifted to the customer and energy charges part of the bill after today.

While making preparations for the change, Progress Energy accidentally dropped the line item charge from customer bills a week early. The amount was not factored into any other part of the bill as it will be in upcoming bills.

"They called me earlier last week to let me know they had this problem," said Charles Rehwinkel, associate state public counsel. "It appears to us that it was genuinely an error. The way they're fixing it is reasonable."

Bill Newton, executive director of the Florida Consumer Action Network, said he was concerned about the impact on customers who already had budgeted for the month based on the first bill they received.

"I'm sure people aren't happy about it," Newton said. "It throws off people's planning.

"I hope they give people a little latitude since people are on tight budgets," he said.

Grant said due dates for payments will be reset with the new bills. Progress Energy bills have due dates that are 20 days after the date of the bill.

Customers on autopay plans, which debit the payments from their bank accounts, should not be affected by the error. Grant said autopay payments have not been processed yet. Debits from banking accounts will not occur until after the corrected bill has been sent.

In addition, Progress Energy told the Office of the Public Counsel that there would be no late charges or collection actions against customers related to the billing error.

Ivan Penn can be reached at ipenn@sptimes.com or (727) 298-2332. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ Consumers_Edge and become a fan of Consumer's Edge on Facebook.