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Maine Regulators Expanding Probe Into CMP Overbilling Complaints

M. Spencer Green
/
Associated Press File
A smart meter in Illinois in 2013.

State regulators are expanding their inquiry of complaints from more than 1,000 Central Maine Power customers who say they were overbilled during the winter.

In some cases customers say their bills doubled or tripled from the same time last year — more than can be accounted for by a recent hike in the price of electricity or by the plunge in temperatures around Christmas.

The Public Utilities Commission opened its inquiry last month, but will now hire a forensic investigator to delve more deeply into the complex interactions between CMP’s new billing system, its electronic meter-reading system and customers’ actual usage.

“We certainly understand that consumers are very concerned, as are we,” says PUC spokesman Harry Lanphear. “We want to conduct a very thorough analysis. If consumers still have a concern as of today they should call Central Maine Power Co. and try to resolve that issue and if that does not happen then they should absolutely contact us and we can take a formal complaint.”

This story was originally published March 20, 2018 at 3:07 p.m. ET.

The commission and CMP both say that any customers who were overbilled will be made whole, whether or not they make a complaint. And CMP says it has trained a new complaints resolution team that is working through the backlog.

A Columbia University graduate, Fred began his journalism career as a print reporter in Vermont, then came to Maine Public in 2001 as its political reporter, as well as serving as a host for a variety of Maine Public Radio and Maine Public Television programs. Fred later went on to become news director for New England Public Radio in Western Massachusetts and worked as a freelancer for National Public Radio and a number of regional public radio stations, including WBUR in Boston and NHPR in New Hampshire.