Date: Fri 22-Dec-1995

Publication: Bee

Author: ANDREA

Quick Words:

Nunnawauk-electric-bill-NU

Full Text:

Nunnawauk Meadows Resident Gets A Different Kind Of Electric Shock

with photo and graphic (electric bill)

B Y A NDREA Z IMMERMANN

Eighty-year-old Madeline Parson got the surprise of her life early this month

when she opened her mail. It wasn't a prize-winner notification from

Publishers Clearing House; it was a $9,329.24 electric bill from Connecticut

Light & Power for November.

The Nunnawauk Meadows resident, who lives in an efficiency apartment and

"cooks" only coffee and toast, said her bills had been averaging $30 a month.

"I opened the bill up and my eyes opened up larger than the envelope," she

said, motioning with her hands to show just how big that was. "If I were

Jackie Gleason, I would have sent somebody to the moon."

After popping a nitroglycerin pill, she called her daughter who suggested she

just forget about the bill because it must be a mistake. But it wasn't in Mrs

Parson's nature to let something like that drop - she had spent 43 years as a

supervisor for a purchasing comptroller, and she expected some answers.

She called Connecticut Light & Power and the credit representative who helped

her became "hysterical laughing" when she looked up the account. "She said,

`You must have been lighting up half of Newtown!'" said Mrs Parson. "Then she

told me to `Just throw the bill in the pail.'" The next day a corrected bill

for $107.31 was in her mailbox.

In talking with her neighbors at Nunnawauk Meadows, Mrs Parson found she was

not the only one was over-billed for utilities that month. She, however, was

the only one with such an extreme mistake.

"Fewer than twelve Nunnawauk residents were over-billed. We identified a

problem with reading meters and have corrected it," said CL&P Spokeswoman Myra

Humphries on Monday. That evening credit representatives were going to review

all the bills sent to Nunnawauk Meadows. "Anything not in line will be

identified and a second bill will be sent for that billing period. If anyone

has overpaid an account, they will be credited for the difference."

Although state statutes regarding customer confidentiality prevented the

spokeswoman from speaking specifically about Mrs Parson's situation, she said

that such a huge error is unusual. "We have two different checks for

information. One is the meter reader - if he or she puts in a reading that's

off by 1,000 kwh [the computer will indicate this is out of line and] will

prompt the meter reader to reread the meter," said Ms Humphries. If that fail

safe does not work, usually the computer picks up the descrepancy because it

projects an amount of usage based on billing history and compares it to the

current bill. "If it's off, it gets bumped to a person for analysis."

The spokeswoman said she is unaware of any other specific instances in Newtown

where there has been a problem with over-billing. Estimated bills, of course,

will not be exactly on the mark, she added. At the start of a cold or hot

season, the 1.1 million CL&P customers in Connecticut usually see a jump in

their electric bills, and those who have electric heat might particularly feel

"sticker shock," she said.

Nunnwauk Meadows is still abuzz over the incorrect billing, and everybody's

having a good laugh.

"It's a real gas, now ," laughed Mrs Parson. "But if I had had somebody's

throat at the time, they would have had me in for murder."