Coast Electric will not make customers pay for billing mistake

Coast Electric changing course on its decision to charge customers who were undercharged on their bills in a recent billing error.

After thousands of customers were asked to pay the difference on a billing error made by Coast Electric, the company now announced they will no longer be charging for the error.

In a statement released by Coast Electric, they said they realize their attempt to collect from the 5% of members affected by the billing error was the wrong course of action.

Frustrated customers are relieved they won’t be billed but many are concerned that they’ll still be paying for Coast Electric’s mistake. Coast Electric Customer Gary Decossas said, “We haven’t received any proof or evidence of the billing error or what caused it. I’ve actually been trying to talk to the board so I can find out how far this goes back, when they found out about it and who made the decision to unilaterally not involve us. We’re just going to send you a letter and say deal with it.”

Coast Electric has addressed these concerns saying they will find other ways to reduce expenses that do not affect their customers’ service or reliability to make up the difference.

Coast Electric Director of Communications April Lollar said, “When we listened to our members after we sent the letters out, we heard loud and clear that this would have a really negative impact on some people.  So, we decided the best thing we can do for our members is take care of those charges so they don’t have to. We are going to make sure we do this through our expenses so it will not affect service, rates or operation.”

Customers that are concerned with inaccurate charges can call Coast Electric for an exact breakdown of monthly charges.