On February 4th I received the following emailfrom everyone’s favorite energy company, PG&E, titled PGE BillAdjustment.

Dear Valued Customer,

We are writing to let you know about a billing issueaffecting your PG&E account number listed above. Your account wasunderbilled by $-1875.00. As part of our process, we review our billingoperations to ensure that our customers are billed correctly, and during thosereviews, we sometimes find a billing exception that may result in a billadjustment.

If you recall – as my wife surely does – this summer I neglectedto realize that our solar panel system breaker had tripped, causing our giant solararray to be nothing more than the world’s ugliest home improvement project forthe hottest two and a half months of the year – possibly of the decade. Thiswonderful learning experience caused us to get a true-up bill this year that isso large it can be seen from space.

While PG&E is not willing to do anything crazy like printin bold at the top of your August bill, “HEY! YOU DIDN’T PRODUCE A SINGLE kWhLAST MONTH!”, they are willing to “work with you” after the fact in thesebreaker-tripping situations. They are graciously allowing me to pay them thetrue-up sum equal to the gross national product of Cuba in twelve equalpayments with no interest.

Now, even though they know that they agreed to let me pay itover twelve months, they still list the gargantuan remaining total as my “billamount” each month, as if I was in charge of lighting up lower Manhattan forthe last thirty days.

So, since I’m used to seeing big numbers – numbers that don’talways fit on only one line of the bill – from them, when I received the aboveemail, I didn’t fall directly out of my chair. I actually scoffed a littleunder my breath, like, “Is that all you got?”

Then I read it again and had to ask – myself, of course, notcustomer service… I mean, who can get a hold of those people? – what do youmean you “underbilled” my account by a negative number? Is that just a cute wayof saying you overbilled me because you don’t want to actually say that?

And which is worse? Admitting you underbilled me oroverbilled me? On the one hand, you look like you don’t know what you’re doing,but at least you get to take more of my money while I get even more frustratedand disappointed with you. On the other hand, you still look like an idiot, butI’m happier, but you have to give me money back. Tough call, there.

Then I thought about it more and laughed at myself for eventhinking that through. This is PG&E. There’s no way they would ever admit theyoverbilled me! Ha ha ha. So silly.

Their nice email went on to say:

We have corrected the issue, and a bill adjustment willbe reflected on your next statement. We apologize, and we are working toimprove our billing system to prevent issues like this from affecting you inthe future. You do not need to take any action at this time.

I guess you don’t HAVE to take any action at this time, butif your heart stopped working, or simply blew right out of your chest when youread their email, you may WANT to take some action involving dialing 9-1-1.

Anyway… on February 5th – a whole day later – I receivedanother email from them, entitled Correction to Previous eMail- PGE BillAdjustment

Please disregard the previous email you received onFebruary 4th 2025, regarding this bill adjustment.  The amount as stated was incorrect.  This notification contains the corrected billadjustment for your account.  Weapologize for any inconvenience.

Dear Valued Customer,

We are writing to let you know about a billing issueaffecting your PG&E account number listed above. Your account wasunderbilled by $-18.75. As part of our process, we review our billingoperations to ensure that our customers are billed correctly, and during thosereviews, we sometimes find a billing exception that may result in a billadjustment.

We have corrected the issue, and a bill adjustment willbe reflected on your next statement. We apologize, and we are working toimprove our billing system to prevent issues like this from affecting you inthe future. You do not need to take any action at this time.

So, let me get this straight, PG&E… You are workingto improve your billing system, but you just sent out an email to, I’massuming, a crap-ton of people, with a cardiac-event-inducing decimal placeerror? I mean, decimal place is second-grade stuff, fellas! Sounds like thingsare going great with the billing system improvement project.

Also, PG&E, just so you all know, the fact that you arehaving large-scale decimal place errors in a large-scale bill adjustmentprocess does NOT give us, your customers, a sense of security that youare correctly tallying up all the kilowatts we’re using and sending you.

In fact, it really makes me wonder why you’re so willing toextend me the grace of a no-interest payment plan. Is that because you’re justnot 100% sure I really owe you all that money in the first place?

Maybe it’s time to get the State of California in there tocheck up on you guys and sort this all out? Getting the government involvedshould clear things right up, right?

Ha! Oh, man, I crack myself up sometimes!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2025 Marc Schmatjen

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