Recent Energy Consumer Protections

$145 Million Refund to Edison Customers  

Edison fraudulently claimed millions in incentives for good customer satisfaction and worker safety.  In fact, Edison had doctored its customer satisfaction and safety reports.  Employees responding to management pressure for higher scores had tainted results and even falsified data.

Edison claimed the problem was just a few bad apples, but the resulting investigation showed that was not the case, and that Edison had profited handsomely from the scheme.  TURN worked with the CPUC’s Consumer Protection and Safety Division and Division of Ratepayer Advocates to force Edison to refund the ill-gotten rewards to customers and pay millions in fines.

Defeating Big Business Subsidy Schemes

TURN often defends residential and small business consumers against attempts by the utility companies to offer big business customers discounted rates by shifting costs to small residential and business consumers.  In PG&E’s last rate case, we fought back when PG&E proposed higher rates for small business and residential consumers in order to subsidize lower rates for big businesses, and won important new consumer protections in the process.

TURN successfully negotiated a rate increase that cut PG&E’s greedy grab in half and stopped a particularly heartless scheme (even for PG&E) to raise the rates paid by low-income Californians participating in the CARE (California Alternate Rates for Energy) program.  In addition, TURN won consumer protections for small commercial customers whose landlords submeter their electric service.