Thousands of PPL customers get bills in error
If you’re a PPL Electric Utilities customer who has received a wrong bill in the mail, you probably should contact the company.
The Allentown utility has sent thousands of recent bills with new or incorrect addresses, according to at least two customers who have either spoken to or contacted The Morning Call.
Sue Saintz of Mechanicsburg, Cumberland County, was doubly surprised: She said she received two PPL bills Wednesday, but her family has paid their bills online for years.
The two invoices sent to her address had different customer names with different amounts owed for electricity, she said.
Saintz said she contacted the company, and a representative told her PPL could not do anything and that “thousands” of bills went to wrong addresses that would make it difficult to track each bill. A different source said a PPL representative put the number at 80,000 affected addresses.
“I thought, if I know these people, I would have walked the bills to their homes, but I didn’t know these people,” Saintz said. “I just called PPL to say this isn’t correct.
“What shocked me was [PPL customer service representative] saying to me there were thousands of addresses mixed up. I thought, wow, that’s a biggie, I think.”
PPL spokesperson Jane George did not specify how many customers’ bills were affected. “Recently some customer bills were returned for incorrect addresses,” George said. “At the end of March, we performed an address correction to ensure that we had the most-accurate data for our customers.”
George said customers who notice incorrect address information on their bills should call PPL at 800-342-5775. She also said any customer who incurs a late fee will receive a credit.
Saintz, a charter school nurse in Harrisburg, took to social media to post her experiences, which drew several dozen responses as of Friday afternoon.
“Technology is great, to a degree,” she said, “and sometimes it just throws you a pile of mud.”
State agencies that monitor utilities, including the state Public Utility Commission and Pennsylvania Office of Consumer
Advocate, were unaware of PPL’s billing problem but said they were investigating.
“We will try to get to the bottom of it and find out what they are going to do as well,” Deputy Consumer Advocate Christine Hoover said of PPL.
This is not the first instance in which PPL has run afoul over a billing matter. The PUC approved a settlement in August with PPL after the company improperly billed five residential customers during 2017 and 2018.
PPL, which delivers electricity to 1.4 million customers in 29 counties and throughout the Lehigh Valley, agreed to pay a $5,000 civil penalty and provide better procedures in its billing practices.
PPL recently angered some customers by raising its rate for electricity by 38% beginning June 1, after a nearly 26% hike in December. The company in May attributed the spike to global market forces and economic events such as inflation that have had an impact on the cost of energy.