Fees, shutoffs to begin again for gas utility
Summit to resume regular business — with oversight
Summit Utilities Inc. is again sending out shutoff notices and charging latefee penalties for ratepayers behind on their bills after nearly a full year of suspending the policies because of billing troubles experienced by hundreds of thousands of customers across the state.
About 33,000 Arkansans remain behind on payments to Summit and are at risk for a service shutoff and the amount owed by the great majority of ratepayers is below $500, according to information provided by the natural gas utility. Of those, 19,000 customers owe between $100-$500.
Summit is owed $25 million by customers who are going through the disconnect and late-fee process, the company reports, estimating that about 4,600 customers through this weekend should have been alerted they are at high risk of losing gas service within two weeks unless they set up repayment plans. Those initial alerts have been issued to ratepayers who owe $1,000 or more.
The shutoff process begins later for the roughly 28,400 remaining customers eligible for shutoff but who owe the utility under $1,000.
All customers behind on their bills have been receiving notices that the policies are being revived since July, when the Arkansas Public Service Commission approved implementation and outlined the process for communicating with customers. Late fees were suspended in November 2022, sparked by ratepayer anger over soaring winter bills. Summit has been cleared of any wrongdoing by the commission, which conducted a five-month investigation.
After the July ruling, the company accelerated customer notifications to those behind on payments. “We started a pretty intensive communications campaign with our customers,” said Brian Bowen, senior director of external affairs.
Staggered communications included direct mail, email, media and targeted mailing. “We tried to hit every market that we could to make sure customers knew we were going to resume our normal collection activities,” he said. “We really wanted to target those who had pastdue balances.”
The commission authorized Summit to begin issu
ing shutoff notices on Sept. 10 and charging late fees on Sept. 15. All delinquent customers have time to set up payment plans, which can be extended out for 18 months.
Attorney General Tim Griffin, who called on the public service commission to investigate Summit in March, says he’s still in regular contact with company officials, pressing them to extend the payment plans even further out.
“As the advocate for Arkansas customers, I have urged Summit Utilities to offer delayed payment terms that will give customers with past due accounts a reasonable opportunity to pay their bills over time,” Griffin said. “We are in regular communication with the company to make sure that happens.”
Right now, the attorney general’s office and regulators at the commission have no plans to set up special monitoring of the shutoff notices and latefee penalties except through normal reviews of individual complaints. Both agencies said they will treat any customer concerns at Summit the same way they do complaints about other utilities.
“There’s nothing to really monitor unless we get complaints or unless the company gets complaints,” said Michael Marchand, the commission’s executive director, who noted the commission also will access and review customer concerns that go directly to the utility. “We thought it was important to independently review those, and Summit has agreed to share that information with us.”
Rigorous examination of Summit’s activities and billing picks up next year, beginning Feb. 1 when the utility files its first quarterly report for public review as ordered by the commission during the investigation. Summit is required to file the reports every quarter for two years. The Feb. 1 filing will include the last two quarters of this year — July through December — while future reports will outline data from the prior quarter.
Reports must include customer complaints from Arkansas and other service areas outside the state; the number of estimated bills per month; billing cycles; customer service response times; customer communications; and call center improvements, among others.
Two issues are of most importance to the commission: complaints filed in Arkansas and elsewhere, and the volume of bills that Summit estimates each month compared with bills based on actual meter reads. Public service commission rules forbid estimates for an individual bill for more than two consecutive months.
Comparing customer complaints in Arkansas against those filed in other states will allow a broader perspective on issues that concern customers, Marchand said. “That was important to us to give context behind the filings, otherwise it’s just meaningless reporting,” he added. “We’ll get a baseline for how to compare with their other jurisdictions.”
Another critical element of ongoing review will be examination of the number of estimated bills every quarter. Summit’s estimating bills instead of using actual meter reads — “the commission identified that as one of the main problems” in the investigation, Marchand said.
As for service cutoffs, Summit will send several alerts, including mailings, door-hangers and two phone calls, before service is shut down. Customers can set up payment plans to avoid disruption up until the day service is turned off. Those who fail to act must pay the full amount owed and a $37 reconnect fee.
Even after shutoff, Summit is offering a five-day grace period for customers to pay up before the account is referred to collections.
About 7,200 customers already have started a repayment plan, lowering the number of total ratepayers behind on bills to about 33,000 – and more than 30,000 of those are residential. That number was 47,000 in mid-July, according to commission filings.