Pa. PUC to Not Allow Customers to Restrict All Information from Customer Lists

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November 15, 2010

The Pennsylvania PUC adopted a final order Friday establishing interim guidelines for eligible customer lists (ECL) to be made available to electric generation suppliers by electric distribution companies (M-2010-2183412).  A written order signed electronically by the Secretary was posted on the PUC website Friday but was removed sometime since then.  

The final order does not materially depart from a tentative order issued in July (7/16).

Notably, the interim guidelines do not allow customers to restrict all of their information from the customer list.  Customers may restrict, through affirmative opt-out, only their service addresses, historical billing data, and/or telephone numbers.  Only victims of domestic violence or customers that are similarly endangered may restrict all of their information.

Vice Chairman Tyrone Christy dissented, in large part due to the inability of customers to restrict information other than their service address, historical billing data, and/or telephone number.  Commissioner Wayne Gardner dissented in part due to the inclusion of phone numbers on the lists.

"I support the promotion of competition.  However, the information to be released to these non-regulated, private companies contains personal information including individuals' telephone numbers.  These guidelines provide that customers may opt-out of having their telephone numbers released but if they do not opt-out, their phone numbers will be given to any EGS that requests it," Gardner said.

"It is inappropriate as a government agency to require our regulated companies to release the telephone number of their customers to private, unregulated, businesses.  Many people guard their telephone numbers closely and they would not want their numbers given to companies so that they can receive sales calls.  Additionally, the provision in this Order requiring that customers' telephone numbers be released to EGSs without the customer's consent, could have the unintended consequence of harming competition by leaving a negative impression of EGSs on those who receive sales calls from them.  Finally, there is no legitimate reason to release customers' phone numbers.  The purpose of the ECL is to provide information to EGSs that will assist them in preparing competitive offers to potential customers.  A phone number is not needed to accomplish this as the EGSs will have access to sufficient information including the customer's name, billing address, usage information and other data that will allow them to market their products and services," Gardner said.

"[T]he Commission is mandating that EDCs release most customer information to all EGSs even if the customer strenuously objects," Christy said.

"The is the first instance of which I am aware in which a State utility commission has decreed that there will be neither an opt-in requirement nor an opt-out right before private customer information is released to third parties," Christy added.

"Any marginal increase in shopping statistics as a result of the mandatory release of customer information will be accompanied by the loss of consumer privacy protections -- an unacceptable trade-off," Christy said.

Christy said that by citing phone number and historical usage as examples, 52 Pa. Code §54.8 did not intend that such information is to be the only information customers can restrict from being shared with suppliers.

Furthermore, Christy interprets the final order as not including monthly on-peak and off-peak usage and load factors as falling under the definition of historic usage data, and thus customers will not be able to prevent the sharing of such monthly on-peak and off-peak usage and load factor information.

Christy argued that the sharing of such information would violate 66 Pa. C.S. §2807(f)(3), which provides that EDCs shall make customer meter data available to suppliers "with customer consent."

Based on the order which briefly appeared on the PUC's website, the Commission will not require EDCs to provide suppliers with information, for business customers, relating to the customer account's point of contact (where different from the information for the legal account holder).  However, in the interest of supplying important information to suppliers, the order "encourage[d]" the EDCs to respond to suppliers' requests for this information if it is available.

The order which appeared online found that both a POLR indicator and interval meter flag should be included on the customer lists.

Additionally, the PUC determined that current and future capacity and transmission obligations should be included on the customer lists, with the understanding that due to the schedule of these calculations, the fields for future values will not always be populated.  

Customer lists shall be updated monthly.  The order adopted consensus information to be included on the customer lists as described in the tentative order (see 7/16 story for data fields).

   
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