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Due To Error, Utility Erroneously Informed Regulator That Retail Suppliers Not In Compliance With Billing Rules

October 13, 2016

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Copyright 2010-16 EnergyChoiceMatters.com
Reporting by Paul Ring • ring@energychoicematters.com

Connecticut Light and Power (Eversource) informed the Connecticut PURA that, due to EDI problems, it had erroneously informed PURA that for certain customer accounts, retail suppliers were not providing information regarding early termination fees which must be provided to the EDCs for inclusion on bills, when, in fact, suppliers had been sending the information, but the information was not appearing in CL&P's system.

Based on information provided by the EDCs, PURA has been issuing RFIs to dozens of retail suppliers concerning their compliance with recently adopted billing rules, which require suppliers to list on customer bills certain "summary" information such as the next month's rate, contract expiration date, and the amount of any early termination fee. Such RFIs had noted that the utilities had shown that suppliers were not populating the fields for any number of accounts.

CL&P informed PURA today that after it initially provided such information to PURA, "it came to the attention of Eversource that information in the 'Cancellation Fee' column was inaccurate."

"Specifically, on Wednesday, September 28, 2016, representatives from Eversource met with an Electronic Data Interchange ('EDI') provider (a company who transmits supplier data between suppliers and Eversource). During said meeting, an EDI staff member brought up an account that had a Cancellation Fee populated by the supplier, but the Eversource system showed that it was missing. Eversource promptly asked the EDI provider to send a random sampling of accounts for review. On Monday, October 3, 2016, the EDI provider sent a small sampling of random accounts to Eversource on this issue. After review, the Company confirmed that its system is missing Cancellation Fees that had previously been submitted by certain suppliers, and actions were immediately taken to determine the root cause of the problem," CL&P said

"IT’s investigation found that only in instances where a supplier sent an EDI transaction containing a Cancellation Fee of $0.00 and subsequently submitted another transaction populating a different Senate Bill 2 field, the subsequent transaction reset the $0.00 Cancellation Fee to 'Not Provided', which made it seem as if the supplier never sent over the original filing documenting the $0.00 Cancellation Fee," CL&P reported

"Eversource immediately began investigating methods to rectify this situation. The Company wanted to bring this information to the attention of the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority ('PURA') as promptly as possible. The Company is working on a resolution and anticipates that one will be ready no later than November 2, 2016," CL&P said

CL&P stressed that, "It should be noted that all of the suppliers that were identified as having failed to submit Cancellation Fees were also remiss in providing other Senate Bill 2 information. Thus, all of the suppliers that were identified in the attachment to Q-SEU-003 would have been included notwithstanding this issue; however, the number of accounts for which they failed to provide Cancellation Fee information could have been lower than noted in the filing."

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