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CMP Welcomes Audit, Says High Bills Are Explainable

A Maine utility that is facing complaints of unusually high power bills says it has faith that a state audit will determine whether its systems are producing accurate bills.

Central Maine Power officials today said they have yet to find any problems with their billing system. They told reporters on a teleconference there have been nearly 1600 complaints of high bills in recent months.

CMP spokesperson Beth Nowack Cowen said they did uncover some problems with how usage was shown on bills.

"There was some presentment issues with how usage information was provided to customers. None of that presentment information, and the data on that chart, is used in the bill calculation. So, happy to say that it did not impact the bill payment amount, but it was a presentment error and we have since fixed it."

Vice President Eric Stinneford says spikes in bills have proved explainable, even in cases where customers claimed they owned vacant structures that used no power at all:

"On a number of these where we have followed up with a customer, we have discovered that they in fact did have appliances, or heating elements that were left on that did explain usage, in most cases to the customer's satisfaction, but not in all cases."

CMP says an internal audit is continuing, and they welcome an outside audit of complaints the Public Utilities Commission plans to undertake.