Miscellaneous

Singapore Power’s less-than-stellar billing track record

I used the term ‘less-than-stellar’ instead of ‘poor’ only because there is no definitive benchmark for ‘poor’ - in the unlikely circumstance that SP decides to take issue and nitpick on my comments…

Channel NewsAsia reported that some consumers complained of a 50% spike in their electricity bills for the month of June. When contacted, Singapore Power attributed it to higher consumption due to the hot weather, when air-conditioners ‘work harder’ to maintain the same cooling level.

I am utterly not convinced. My household electricity bill for June went up by about 50% as well. However, I use the air-conditioner very infrequently - say, several nights a month. I am not convinced that the few nights of use can result in that much of a diifference in the bill even if the air-conditioner used more electricity on hot days.

Here is the official response from Singapore Power:

“There is no glitch in the billing system, which has been in operation since the year 2000,” said an SP Services spokesperson. Consumption is usually higher from April to September due to the hotter months, she noted. “When the weather is hot, consumers tend to use more water and air-conditioning, which lead to higher energy use. Moreover, during the hotter months, air-conditioning consumes more power to maintain the same temperature as compared to cooler months.”

I attempt to prove that this statement is flawed:

1. Having a billing system that has been in operation since 8 years ago does not suggest that there can be no glitch in it. A system glitch can be caused by human error, and in fact, I suspect there are not many information systems with totally zero error rates in this world.
2. SP’s billing system is not particularly known for its reliability. From time to time there are letters in the ST Forum from consumers who discovered billing discrepancies… If I remember correctly there had also been incidents in the past when bills were sent to the wrong households?
3. In November 2003, SP Services also sued its ex-vendor for a faulty billing system that affected tens of thousands of home users in 2000. A household was even billed more than $39,000 due to the glitch. How can SP insinuate that there are no glitches in their system “in use since 2000″, when it is the same system that was the center of a major billing glitch in 2000? Granted, steps should have been taken to rectify the faults since the errors were discovered, but this does not mean that there will not be any more issues with the system.
4. It should also be noted that SP eventually reached an out-of-court settlement with its ex-vendor, which counter-sued SP, charging that it was “SP Services’ own failings” that resulted in the problems. To be fair, since it was an out-of-court settlement there is no way to know whose failing it was. However, consumers should never bear the brunt for any service provider’s own management problems.
5. In the same CNA article, the SP spokesperson also mentioned that “… spikes in some bills could be due to adjustments made to make up for “under-billing” the month before.” On 6 May 2008, a reply to the ST Forum by SP (in response to a complaint) also suggested that “(the manual intervention of billing) approach is costly and error-prone”. This implies that errors can likely happen as a result of manual (I suppose, human) intervention in the billing system. This contradicts SP’s own statement that its billing system is glitch-less.
6. Additionally, I also know of somebody who had an electricity bill of just $1 once - for some unknown reason. If it was not a glitch, then what happened?

The question is, who can verify whether SP Services’ billing system is indeed flawless? I suppose audit checks can reveal any problems, but based on what I understand about information systems auditing, problems can go undiscovered - especially when problems arise from manual intervention in automated system processes, and auditing only tests the integrity of systems.

Next question - whose responsibility is it to ensure that consumers are not disadvantaged when it comes to billing matters? Besides internal audit and the customary annual external audit, what does the Government do to regulate service providers such as SP?

Lastly, based on a search of past newspaper reports, it seems that meter faults are the most common reasons cited for billing disrepancies - given the incidence of reported (and possibly many non-reported) cases of meter faults, why is SP still billing customers based on bi-monthly meter checks? Furthermore, are there any processes in place to ensure that all electricity meters are checked at regular intervals to ensure they are functioning normally?

© 2008 this lush garden within.