Reverting back may be cheaper

I have a few comments about the Daily Herald front page article “PUD to consider costly billing fix”: It doesn’t surprise me the PUD-proposed fix to a poor billing system (with at least 59 percent of the bills inaccurate based on the percentages noted in the article) is costly and the PUD customers will have to pay for the increase in costs.

The new billing system installed in September 2015 had increased costs compared to the old system. Since the new system was a monthly billing system as opposed to the old bimonthly billing system it required twice the envelopes, twice the paper for the bills, twice the printing costs and twice the postage. I’m confident these cost increases were passed on to the PUD customers.

The new billing system was more complex because it required an estimate for one month based on the prior year electrical usage at the location and corrections the following month to account for any under or over estimate of electrical usage. Has the PUD heard of “K.I.S.S.”?

Why not revert to the old system PUD customers knew? It was accurate because the bill reflected the actual electrical usage. This would eliminate the extra costs of the new system and eliminate the need for monthly meter reading to get a more accurate electrical bill.

Will the PUD complain reverting to the old system will be a loss because the cost of the new billing software and its installation was wasted? I expect reverting to the old system would save money in the long run.

Susan Kramer

Everett