City finds metering data error that inflated February electric bills for about 3,300 customers

City staff told the East Point City Council on March 3 that an incorrect metering-data pull caused unusually high electric bills in February for roughly 3,309 customers.

The council heard the findings from Thomas Mangrum, who presented an analysis showing meter reads pulled 10 days early (Dec. 26, 2024) rather than the scheduled Jan. 6, 2025 read. That timing, Mangrum said, carried unbilled consumption from late December into the February billing cycle and left January underbilled, producing what staff described as “double billing” for affected customers.

The issue affected three billing cycles (4, 5 and 18), with cycle counts Mangrum gave as about 830, 795 and 1,684 customers respectively. Mangrum said the utility stopped disconnecting customers for nonpayment on Feb. 13 while it completed the analysis. He said the utility will waive late fees for customers in the three affected cycles and offer payment plans; customer-care contact information was provided on the record.

Why it happened

Mangrum described the root cause as an incorrect data-pull date: the meter-data system returned reads from Dec. 26 instead of the requested Jan. 6 date. That produced an extra roughly 10 days of consumption rolled into February for many accounts. For some customers that extra usage pushed their consumption into higher billing tiers, increasing the dollar impact.

Mangrum and staff outlined immediate and planned steps: stop disconnections (already enacted), waive late fees for the affected cycles, enable customer-service staff to show line-by-line differences between the January and February bills, and change system prompts so data older than two days triggers a visual verification read. He said staff will review tiered-rate impacts and make adjustments where customers were charged at a higher tier because of the error.

Council questions and concerns

Several council members pressed staff for more detail about audit and verification procedures that might have caught the problem before bills went out. Council member Cummings and others noted a similar utility-billing problem last year and asked why additional audits had not been put in place. Mangrum said staff will add more checks and integrate periodic audits into standard operating procedures.

Council member Butler asked whether customer-service staff have the capacity to explain account-level differences; Mangrum said staff are trained and can show customers how reads moved between months. Council member Atkins and others asked staff to ensure that bill corrections do not push future bills into higher tiers incorrectly; Mangrum said staff will review each account and apply tier-corrected adjustments.

What customers should expect

Mangrum said customers who received unusually high February bills should contact customer care to review their account and enroll, if needed, in available payment plans. Staff said they will individually review accounts to calculate what customers would have been billed under the correct reads and tiers and apply adjustments.

Nut graf: The city attributed the spike in charges to an early system data pull that added roughly 10 days of consumption to February bills; the council demanded stronger audit controls and account-by-account adjustments to avoid shifting incorrect charges into later cycles.

Ending

Staff said it will return to the council with updated analysis of tier impacts and a schedule for account corrections. In the interim the utility suspended disconnects for nonpayment for the affected cycles and is waiving late fees for impacted accounts.