On February 4th I received the following email
from everyone’s favorite energy company, PG&E, titled PGE Bill
Adjustment.
Dear Valued Customer,
We are writing to let you know about a billing issue affecting your PG&E account number listed above. Your account was underbilled by $-1875.00. As part of our process, we review our billing operations to ensure that our customers are billed correctly, and during those reviews, we sometimes find a billing exception that may result in a bill adjustment.
If you recall – as my wife surely does – this summer I neglected to realize that our solar panel system breaker had tripped, causing our giant solar array to be nothing more than the world’s ugliest home improvement project for the hottest two and a half months of the year – possibly of the decade. This wonderful learning experience caused us to get a true-up bill this year that is so large it can be seen from space.
While PG&E is not willing to do anything crazy like print in bold at the top of your August bill, “HEY! YOU DIDN’T PRODUCE A SINGLE kWh LAST MONTH!”, they are willing to “work with you” after the fact in these breaker-tripping situations. They are graciously allowing me to pay them the true-up sum equal to the gross national product of Cuba in twelve equal payments with no interest.
Now, even though they know that they agreed to let me pay it over twelve months, they still list the gargantuan remaining total as my “bill amount” each month, as if I was in charge of lighting up lower Manhattan for the last thirty days.
So, since I’m used to seeing big numbers – numbers that don’t always fit on only one line of the bill – from them, when I received the above email, I didn’t fall directly out of my chair. I actually scoffed a little under my breath, like, “Is that all you got?”
Then I read it again and had to ask – myself, of course, not customer service… I mean, who can get a hold of those people? – what do you mean you “underbilled” my account by a negative number? Is that just a cute way of saying you overbilled me because you don’t want to actually say that?
And which is worse? Admitting you underbilled me or overbilled 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 frustrated and disappointed with you. On the other hand, you still look like an idiot, but I’m happier, but you have to give me money back. Tough call, there.
Then I thought about it more and laughed at myself for even thinking that through. This is PG&E. There’s no way they would ever admit they overbilled me! Ha ha ha. So silly.
Their nice email went on to say:
We have corrected the issue, and a bill adjustment will be reflected on your next statement. We apologize, and we are working to improve our billing system to prevent issues like this from affecting you in the 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, but if your heart stopped working, or simply blew right out of your chest when you read their email, you may WANT to take some action involving dialing 9-1-1.
Anyway… on February 5th – a whole day later – I received another email from them, entitled Correction to Previous eMail- PGE Bill Adjustment
Please disregard the previous email you received on February 4th 2025, regarding this bill adjustment. The amount as stated was incorrect. This notification contains the corrected bill adjustment for your account. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Dear Valued Customer,
We are writing to let you know about a billing issue affecting your PG&E account number listed above. Your account was underbilled by $-18.75. As part of our process, we review our billing operations to ensure that our customers are billed correctly, and during those reviews, we sometimes find a billing exception that may result in a bill adjustment.
We have corrected the issue, and a bill adjustment will be reflected on your next statement. We apologize, and we are working to improve our billing system to prevent issues like this from affecting you in the future. You do not need to take any action at this time.
So, let me get this straight, PG&E… You are working to improve your billing system, but you just sent out an email to, I’m assuming, a crap-ton of people, with a cardiac-event-inducing decimal place error? I mean, decimal place is second-grade stuff, fellas! Sounds like things are going great with the billing system improvement project.
Also, PG&E, just so you all know, the fact that you are having large-scale decimal place errors in a large-scale bill adjustment process does NOT give us, your customers, a sense of security that you are correctly tallying up all the kilowatts we’re using and sending you.
In fact, it really makes me wonder why you’re so willing to extend me the grace of a no-interest payment plan. Is that because you’re just not 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 to check up on you guys and sort this all out? Getting the government involved should 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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