A court-appointed independent monitor has verified at least $67.5 million in refunds and credits that the Department of Water and Power will need to pay to remedy inaccurate bills issued to customers during a troubled upgrade of the utility’s billing system, attorneys said this week.
Jack Landskroner, the attorney who represented DWP customers in a class- action lawsuit — and pending settlement — over the billing issues, said even more refund claims could be verified in the future, because the $67.5 million “only addresses the verified credits and refunds customers can automatically receive.”
The settlement will resolve a lawsuit in which customers demanded refunds for overcharges that occurred when PricewaterhouseCoopers carried out an overhaul of the utility’s customer information system in 2013.
The overbilled amount had initially only been estimated as at least $44.7 million.
Another attorney for the DWP customers, Tom Merriman, said the independent monitor has the DWP’s full cooperation and gets “unrestricted access” to the utility’s computer servers.
If the judge gives preliminary approval to the verified amounts on Friday, DWP customers will receive a letter within 90 business days showing the overbilled amounts as verified.
The DWP and attorneys for one of the plaintiffs last week also submitted an updated joint settlement agreement that includes changes that restrict how much the utility can back-bill customers who were under-charged, allows for pre- identification of claims from solar customers, sets up a dedicated customer service staff for complex billing issues and raises the cap on monitoring costs to $2.5 million.
