When a bank, credit card company, investment firm or utility wants to shift customers to paperless billing, they usually ask permission.
Not PG&E. Since the summer of 2020, the company has unilaterally stopped sending 1.2 million bills through the postal service and left customers to find their statements online.
Rather than suggest customers opt-in to paperless billing, the utility forced those who were unhappy with the switch to opt-out. Responding to questions, the company claims that “customers will appreciate the convenience, security and ease of paperless billing.”
I didn’t. And neither did 420,000 other customers.
That’s right. According to PG&E, 35% of the customers who were switched to paperless billing called, emailed or went to the company website to get their paper statements back.
“This is a tremendous number of people opting out,” says Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network, a consumer advocacy organization. “It’s an indication of PG&E being overzealous in switching people without their knowledge and without their consent.”
It’s also a tremendous number of people who had to jump through hoops. Navigating PG&E’s phone-tree-from-hell is no easy feat. It took me over an hour to reach a live person, find out why I hadn’t received a bill in four months and get my paper billing restored.
If PG&E weren’t a monopoly, if it had to treat its customers like, well, customers, this would have never happened. Because no business that cares about keeping our business would treat us like that.
PG&E claims that there has been no drop-off in timely payments with the paperless billing switch. That wasn’t my experience: As I was discovering what had happened, the company was sending me a debt-relief-plan offer because I had fallen behind on payments. Similarly, 20 customers who filed complaints with the California Public Utilities Commission about the consentless switch found themselves saddled with past-due bills of over $700, $892, over $1,000, $1,234, $1,675 and $2,000.
PG&E customers who want to resume receiving their bills through the postal service should email the utility at PaperlessNotification@pge.com. Include the name on the account, as well as the service address and/or account number. Those with time and patience can call 1-800-743-5000.
To be sure, there are good cost and environmental reasons for switching willing customers to paperless billing. But PG&E forces it upon customers, many of whom still use those paper bills as reminders to pay on time.
PG&E says it used promotional campaigns to entice about 2.3 million of its 6 million residential and commercial customers to switch to paperless billing. That’s fine. Those people agreed to the change.
But the utility company started two years ago automatically switching 1.2 million more customers. The program swept up anyone who had previously provided the utility an email address and had paid their bill through the utility’s website or just through their bank bill-pay system. It’s from that group that 420,000 customers balked.
To alert customers that they would no longer receive bills through the mail, the company says, it sent two emails, placed two automated phone calls and included notification on the final paper bill.
I, like some of those complaining to the PUC, never saw the email notifications. The phone number PG&E had for me was long out of date. As for the notification on the final paper bill, it’s in small type at the bottom of the page. I missed it. By the way, looking back, the notice thanked me for “selecting” paperless billing, which I hadn’t done, and provided no instructions to opt-out.
The PUC approved the PG&E automatic-switching program in 2017 after allowing Southern California Edison to do the same in 2015. The PUC staff analysis swallowed the PG&E propaganda that the change would “align with customer preferences.” Clearly, for 420,000 customers, it does not.
The program was supposed to be slowly phased in by increasing the electronic billing by about 2% a year. Instead, PG&E tried to boost participation by about 50% in the past two years. That’s when the complaints to the PUC started rolling in.
PG&E claims customers are happy with the change. Apparently, management hasn’t looked at its own numbers. After I first asked PG&E about the involuntary billing switch, the company said it would start sending separate notifications through the postal service.
But the fundamental problem remains: PG&E isn’t asking customers whether they want to switch. It’s telling them that they will be switched unless they object.
“Customer choice should be respected,” says Toney, the consumer advocate. “It would be smarter for PG&E to get consent from each customer prior to switching.”
It would be smarter to start treating them like customers.
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