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Pacific Palisades Fires: Correcting Misinformation about LADWP’s Water System

STATEMENT BY LADWP GENERAL MANAGER MARCIE EDWARDS REGARDING SETTLEMENT OF CUSTOMER BILLING CLASS ACTION LITIGATION

STATEMENT BY LADWP GENERAL MANAGER MARCIE EDWARDS REGARDING SETTLEMENT OF CUSTOMER BILLING CLASS ACTION LITIGATION

August 17, 2015
“The proposed settlement makes good on a commitment I made to our customers when I was appointed to review every account and make whole any customer who was overcharged by our new billing system – no matter how small the error. With this agreement, every customer who was affected will receive 100 cents on the dollar.

It is important to note that the vast majority of credits and refunds under the proposed settlement will be quite small, amounting to less than $10 for most customers who were affected and the total remaining credits and refunds owed to customers amount to approximately three tenths of one percent of total billings since we began using the new billing system.

However, we know that the problems associated with our billing system caused problems and headaches for far too many of our customers and we apologize to each and every customer who was affected. We are continuing our legal action to seek recovery of all costs associated with the proposed settlement as part of ongoing litigation against PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the firm hired to perform the system integration and replacement of LADWP’s customer information and billing system. The settlement makes clear specific areas where PwC failed to provide key functionality or made critical errors that resulted in overcharges or the inability to quickly refund customer credit balances.

We are proud of the tremendous progress we have made over the past 18 months in fixing the problems caused by the new billing system and in improving our customer service. Call hold times have dropped from over 30 minutes to two minutes, and other billing metrics meet or exceed industry standards. Through this settlement, we have also entered into a binding commitment to stay on the path of improvement by setting benchmarks and key performance indicators and by appointing an independent monitor who will report to the court on our progress every six months.

While the vast majority of system integration defects that led to our billing problems have been fixed, we will continue to make additional improvements to the system. We look forward to a full and complete resolution of these matters through the settlement of this litigation and remain committed to continue improving our customers’ experience.”

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For more information, view the Class Action Litigation Settlement Summary and the Frequently Asked Questions.