Utility, PUC Staff Propose Default Service Bill Recalculation For Shopping Customers Be Eliminated, Credit for Recently Migrating Customers

Unitil, Staff of the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission, and Office of the Consumer Advocate have filed a settlement which proposes to eliminate the default service bill recalculation at Unitil immediately.

Under the default service bill recalculation, customers who had been on fixed price default service and who depart for competitive supply have their past costs for the current default service pricing period recalculated as if they had been on the monthly priced default service option. Customers must then pay an additional charge resulting from the recalculation if the recalculation results in a higher cost.

The settling parties, "have determined that the recalculation requirement appears to be a source of customer confusion and may serve as an impediment to customer choice."

The settlement would immediately suspend Unitil's tariff provision that requires a recalculation of previous default service bills when a customer moves to a competitive supplier, and would direct Unitil to file tariff changes to delete the default service bill recalculation from the tariff effective June 1, 2015.

The requirement that a customer returning to default service from a competitive supplier be placed on the variable monthly default service rate will remain in place.

The settlement provides that each of Unitil's Non-G1 customers who moved from default service to a competitive supplier since December 1, 2014 and received an additional charge as a result of a recalculation of their bills based on the variable rate shall have that charge reversed, in the form of a bill credit

"The difference between the fixed and variable rate for customers that moved from Default Service to a competitive supplier or self-supply shall be flowed through to the Default Service account," the settlement provides