Utility Consumers: Where is my refund?

When a charge for service you receive turns out to be in error,  you expect a refund. But did you know that your utilities don’t have to give you a refund when the Ohio Supreme Court finds that charges you paid to a utility were improperly allowed by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO)? That’s right. An obscure 1950’s Court precedent combined with a lack of action by the PUCO allows utilities to keep payments you have made, even after they were found to be unlawful.

The Ohio Supreme Court has said that utilities do not have to refund improper charges to consumers unless the PUCO takes action to make the utility charge refundable or the Ohio legislature changes the law. And utilities spend millions lobbying to protect and strengthen the unfair advantage they hold over consumers in Ohio’s regulatory landscape.

How much have you lost? Just since 2009, Ohio electric consumers have been denied $1.5 billion in refunds that utilities were allowed to keep, even though the Supreme Court found the utility charges to be improper. 

Former Ohio Supreme Court Justice Paul Pfeifer’s 2014 Opinion on Refunds

Ohio Supreme Court Justice Paul Pfeifer highlighted the injustice of denying utility refunds to consumers in a “dissent’ from the decision of a majority of the Court:

“It is unconscionable that a public utility should be able to retain $368 million that it collected from customers based on assumptions that are unjustified. The problem stems from this court’s 1957 decision. Clearly the time has come to overturn this case.
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[I]t boggles the mind that this court would ever countenance such a proposition: that a public utility should be allowed to fatten itself on the backs of Ohio residents by collecting unjustified charges.
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Allowing AEP to retain the $368 million that it collected based on charges that were not justified is unconscionable. Doing so because of a 50-year-old case that is not supported by the statute on which it is based is ridiculous. The ratepayers of Ohio deserve better.”

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