Dear Editor:
Recently, I noticed a few letters concerning meter readings in
The Dispatch. As a computer consultant, I have dealt with many
utility billing issues, including PG
&
amp;E and water billing for several rental property owners.
Dear Editor:
Recently, I noticed a few letters concerning meter readings in The Dispatch. As a computer consultant, I have dealt with many utility billing issues, including PG&E and water billing for several rental property owners.
In one case, a tenant had reported a billing error that lead to a PG&E demand that more than 1,000 monthly billings, over six months (6,000) be recalculated accurately. The only information the owners had retained was the dollar amounts. Based on this, I use the WRONG calculations in their existing program to reverse-compute dollar amounts into meter readings, and then used the CORRECT calculations to recalculate all the dollar amounts. As it turned out, the total payout for six months to all of these people amounted to less than $100.
The most INTERESTING side of this for me, was discovering that the workers at PG&E did not know how to calculate the bills! What they had was a computer screen to input the information, and then to put out a dollar amount. They had a general idea how this was calculated, but, their manual calculations, like my first “logical” calculations, did not agree with their own computer.
When I asked to speak to a PG&E programmer, they told me that no one was allowed to do that, including them. Furthermore, PG&E the next day, agreed to a less accurate form of calculating the billings. But by then, I had reverse engineered the exact method. PG&E asked ME how to calculate their billings(!), which I did for a group of people by conference call. As it turned out, the actual method PG&E uses is not mathematically logical, but shifts one day each month, they later agreed, “because the public did not understand the logical method.” Over a great deal of time, it made no monetary difference.
I have also discovered calculation errors in city employee compensation contracts (not Gilroy) and in one case, a serious calculation error to the surprise of a mortgage company that offered a timetable for early mortgage payoff by increasing monthly payments. They were several years wrong, to the detriment of the mortgage payers. In these cases, the discovery was accidental, when I discovered that what they SAID a spreadsheet was doing, was not what it was doing.
I will gladly check the computations at no charge for my fellow residents of Gilroy who were suddenly billed for 98,000 extra gallons. This can happen when meters roller over from a number such as 99999 back to 00000. This is not always an easy situation to calculate, since there can be many kinds of meters and each has to be taken into account.
Also, roll-overs occur so infrequently that the problem is very occasional. I would need the permission of these persons to check what is happening. I have no trick up my sleeve. I am just intellectually curious about such situations and would find looking into this interesting.
Tony Weiler, Gilroy, 847-8677
Submitted Thursday, Dec. 11 to ed****@****ic.com
