It isn’t a matter of shifting balances. A month’s worth of billing is a significant amount of money and can result in million sof dollars of lost interest revenue (or interest costs if they need to borrow the money. That cost would be borne by the utilite’s customers, not the utility. I am pretty certain that the method they are using is probably, ex ante, the least costly way to handle the situation. Least cost for them means least cost for their customer. The utility is not going to eat the additional costs of dealing with the hurricane, nor should they.
Of course not. Why should corporations suffer the same levels of inconvenience and cost that plague the average citizen during a natural disaster?
You’d think. But then you’d think people wouldn’t put more on a credit card than they could reasonably pay off in a month, too.
My friend, you must have never worked customer service. People will says all sorts of unbelievable things to get out of paying that bill. “You didn’t send me a bill last month. According to the Constitituion, I don’t have to pay for that month.”
A utility is a far different animal than your average corporation in how they make their money. Their “profit” is highly regulated and they are basically acting as an agent for the customer, providing power and incurring costs. All costs that are deemed reasonable to make sure you get your power reliably is considered costs that they should be able to recover through rates. Costs incurred to restore power through a hurricane are subject to the same review, but generally they are recoverable through rates. That is the deal that has been made, they are heavily regulated. They incur costs on your behalf to provide you with power and you pay them back. Of course, they can’t just get away with saying that costs are whatever they want, many lawyers and analysts hours are spent by the utility, by te commissions ad by the consumer advocate groups to determine which costs are reasonable.
This is stupid. I work for an electric utility, you don’t think that FPL is going through a little inconvenience at due to the hurricane? The repars that are being made are not billed to the customers, the utility is responsible for the cost… or its insurance is. The out of town crews coming in to assist in the restoration effort are also paid by FPL, if it’s like here the hotel rooms and meals are paid by the local utility. Now, after all this cash outlay, you want the utility not to bill its customers for a month? It looks like a good way to have a serious cashflow problem.
Sure they’re regulated, but in many cases throughout the country they also have a virtual (or an actual) monopoly on a commodity that everyone needs. The regulation is the price they pay for a virtually guaranteed profit.
According to the quarterly reports from this site, FPL had a net income, after all operating expenses and income taxes, of $313 million for the six months to June 30, 2005. Does this put it among the highest profit companies in the US? Probably not. But it’s not doing too badly either.
Well, as i said earlier, if not billing for a month would indeed present the company with a serious cash-flow problem, that would be sufficient justification for the estimated billing.
Maybe someone who’s more familiar with accounting procedures and financial statements than i am can look at the spreadsheets at the link i provded above and tell me whether this would, in fact, be the case.
Florida Plunder & Loot also services east central Florida. My poor retired parents are crying about their current bill - it is higher than last month’s.
Someone should tell the CEO of FPL that. In a live news conferences on 10/27, he said they would not.
Sua
FPL has now posted a link on their website providing the status of your power and when it is estimated it will be turned on. 'Course, they managed this innovation only after 80% of power was restored.
I take full credit for this. My bitching has been heard. 
Sua
This is probably resulting in one or two things:
1 - FPL’s customers are currently marching on the CEO’s mansion with torches and pitchforks, or
2 - FPL’s call center employees are currently marching on the CEO’s mansion with torches and pitchforks.
Because either:
1 - FPL is bilking their customers and, if true, I would be calling the utility commission post-haste. Or
2 - The CEO is talking out of his ass, and the call center employees are all having to say, “Yes, we will not bill you for the days you are without power. No, the CEO misspoke,” two thousand times a day.