Puget Sound Energy (PSE) assured Washington state regulators last week it is fixing a natural gas utility back-billing problem that in extreme cases had customers billed for services done as many as six years ago. The flap arose in recent weeks when customers who were under-billed or not billed at all for certain past periods began receiving back-billings, some totaling thousands of dollars.

By state law, no utility is to go more than two consecutive months without sending a bill to a residential customer. Most of the problems for the Puget Energy utility were caused by defective meters in most cases, PSE told the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (WUTC).

In the first half of this year, the WUTC received 32 back-billing customer complaints. After publicizing the issue, another two dozen additional complaints came in — all about excess back-bills. An 85-year-old woman was billed $1,900 for service dating back four years, according to local news media reports. In another case, a customer who had not been billed for six years received a bill for $1,800.

PSE officials told the state regulators that they identified most of the defective meters and the utility has a new system in place to identify them in the future. In the meantime, some administrative processing problems delayed the mailing of some of the back-bills.

Two years ago, the WUTC warned PSE about its back-billing practices. A spokesperson for PSE was not immediately available to comment to NGI on the matter.

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