PNM: More Bills Wrong
5,023 Customers To Receive Credits
PNM now says it overcharged more than 5,000 Santa Fe customers for electricity between October and May — up from 3,280 customers in a previous report — and says the problem came from a single meter reader who entered “false” and “fictitious” readings.
The total amount that will be credited to overcharged customers will be $41,042, up from $20,078 that the power utility had decided to give back in July after its earlier analysis, PNM says in a Friday filing with the state Public Regulation Commission.
The new numbers result from an expanded investigation that looked at every route ever assigned to the employee who was faking meter reads. The total number of customers who will receive credits is now 5,023.
Some overcharged customers were missed in the initial
probe because a route number had been changed in April and PNM officials hadn’t realized the meter reader who falsified readings had been assigned to it, the utility’s Friday filing states.
PNM spokeswoman Susan Sponar wouldn’t say if the meter reader had been disciplined. But she did say, “He’s no longer reading meters for PNM.”
“Customers have a right to an accurate bill,” Sponar said.
Credits will average about $8, she said, and will range from just over $1 to $78.
No comment was available Friday from the PRC. “To my knowledge, the commission hasn’t had an opportunity to review that new information (from PNM) yet,” commission spokesman Arthur Bishop said in an email.
Commissioner Doug Howe said in July that the PRC might have to initiate an investigation into the overbilling and complained about PNM’s response. Many Santa Fe residents had complained.
“It seems clear that PNM either does not know how many customers are affected or is not being forthright about the number affected,” Howe said.
PNM insisted at that time that the 3,280 number for affected customers was accurate but subsequently did more investigation and expanded the time frame to be checked after discovering that bills for customers on one of the errant meter reader’s routes hadn’t been reviewed.
Valerie Smith, also of PNM, said in July that the overbilling occurred when many customers initially were undercharged. When the errors were found and customers were subsequently charged for correct usage in “catch up” bills, they ended up being overcharged at higher rates designated for customers who use more than a certain number of kilowatt hours, since past usage had been added on to the normal usage for a single month.
62 routes checked
Friday’s filing by PNM said that in the expanded investigation, it was determined that the meter reader who provided billing numbers had been on 62 different Santa Fe routes for at least a day during his tenure — May 2011 through April. The filing says he began recording “fictitious meter reads” in October.
The employee didn’t read meters assigned to him, accessed “previous reading/ current consumption data for improper purposes” and entered false meter readings into hand-held devices used to capture meter readings, the filing states.
PNM was able to get accurate total energy use readings for the affected customers for the October to May period, then used Santa Fe’s “average usage profile” to allocate usage for each month during the period. This calculation was done “to ensure that charges per month were calculated using the correct block rates, rather than higher rates caused by artificial spikes due to a catch-up bill,” PNM’s filing states.
“PNM understands the concerns created by the unauthorized actions of a single meter reader,” the filing says. “PNM has taken appropriate action to remedy the situation and to refund affected customers’ overcharges.
“PNM has addressed this matter with utmost concern for its customers and has taken additional steps to monitor meter reader input into the billing system to attempt to prevent a recurrence of this problem in the future.”