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The explanations are inadequate. The efforts to correct the errors are insufficient.
PPL Electric Utilities, Pennsylvania's leading electric utility, billed more than 790,000 of its customers much higher sums than any of the affected customers expected or than the company could clearly justify.
Households that generally pay $150 to $200 a month for electricity report a monthly bill of $500, $600 or even higher.
The errors on the part of PPL are infuriating. PPL President Steph Raymond herself seems to agree.
"Simply put, you deserve better," she told customers in a statement on which the Sun-Gazette's Wednesday edition reported. "We are committed to regaining your trust."
We hope that PPL is willing to take the necessary steps to regain customers' trust. We hope the company can diligently investigate how these excessive charges happened and transparently explain how they happened and what steps will be taken to prevent it from happening again.
We appreciate that in the meantime, PPL has taken some steps to alleviate the problems, including waiving late fees and ruling out shut-offs for non-payment for a period of time.
But these measures can only be a start. Again, a full, detailed accounting of how these errors occurred and how PPL will prevent them from occurring at this scale again are what should be necessary to begin to repair the damage wrought.