Albany Utility sends letters of explanation to customers after estimated bill complaints

ALBANY — The Albany Utility Board announced in a news release Tuesday that letters explaining estimated January billing will be sent to approximately 2,200 customers.

The utility experienced sharp criticism from some in the community after sending out estimated January bills that did not reflect power outages, which lasted for days and even weeks for some customers, after devastating Jan. 2 and 22 storms.

Many residents, including some who had no storm damage but still experienced power outages, were angry about the estimated bills, some of which were higher than in previous months despite prolonged outages. Several took to social media to vent their frustration or called The Albany Herald to register complaints.

“We were without power for a full seven days,” Raymond Akridge told The Herald. “I spent almost $140 on propane and gas for our generator, hoping that I would see a little bit of a break on our utility bill, but it was actually a dollar more than it was the previous month. I think that is wrong. They should bill us for what we used and not for the time we didn’t have power.”

“What is going on, WG&L?” Betty Rehberg posted on the Albany storm recovery Facebook page. “I got my bill today, and even though I had zero electricity or gas for five days, my bill did not go down. It went up by 20 cents. How is that possible? I have heard others that had no power for 1/3 of the month say the same.”

According to Assistant City Manager for Utility Administration Stephen Collier, many bills were estimated because of storm damage.

“What is common in the industry is to perform an estimation if you can’t get the actual data,” said Collier. “With the devastation of the Jan. 2 storm, we simply could not get in to read the meters and, in some rare cases, the meters were even gone, and we don’t understand that. Maybe the storm blew them away. We have recovered some meters, some contractors have given us some that they picked up, found or have taken out of the meter can because there was significant damage to the structure and the meter can. On those, we are certainly able to go in and extract that data.

“What we did was when we set up our billing software and saw that we could not get in to do an actual reading, we did a three-month estimation. The system knows the kilowatt habits. It’s all tracked and it’s documented.”

Albany City Manager Sharon Subadan explained that using estimations is not a new process, but is, in fact, a common one.

“The other thing that I don’t think is well-understood is doing a three-month estimate on meters is something, periodically, that we have to do,” she said. “This isn’t a practice we started with the storm. There are times, for various reasons, we can’t read a meter. We have a drive-by system (in which employees) drive by and read meters.

“If there is something physically blocking the path of the signal from the meter — let’s say somebody parks a big box truck in front of the meter — and (employees) drive by and don’t get a reading, they pull over and they walk up. But if the gate’s locked or there is a dangerous dog and we cannot physically get to the meter there, we estimate the meter reading. It’s not a frequent occurrence, but it is our policy. It is what we do. It’s not something we dreamed up for the storm.”

According to Subadan, letters explaining the estimation were supposed to have gone out with January bills, but for some reason they did not.

“We’ll find out (why the letters did not go out) from the billing company, because we don’t print the bill,” Subadan said. “That letter was sent to them on the fifth of January, and they were told to put it in every bill that goes out.”

Tuesday’s press release explained that the new letter will go to anyone who had an estimated bill.

“Each customer that received an estimated bill will get a letter that provides a breakdown of the reconciliation and shows their energy consumption,” the press release said. “These customers can expect to receive the letter this month.”

Albany Utility promised to “true-up” estimations on the next billing cycle and offered customers who were without power for three or more days a $50 storm assistance credit. The application period for the credit ended Feb. 17.

As of Friday, around 5,900 customers had applied for the $50 storm assistance, costing the utility roughly $295,000, according to officials.

For more information about estimated January bills or the letters of explanation from the city, contact Albany Utility Special Services at (229) 883-8330, prompt 4.