PSEG Long Island automatically switching users to electronic bills

PSEG Long Island, in its latest initiative to encourage customers to stop receiving paper bills in the mail and turn to electronic copies and payments, is near the end of a campaign that will switch some users automatically unless they opt out.

In an email sent in recent weeks to about 200,000 customers PSEG is showing the bare legs of a woman in an orange skirt trying on a pair of orange shoes — the PSEG color — urging customers to “Try paperless billing on for size!”

The campaign tells customers they can try paperless billing, which sends them PDF versions of their bill attached to emails, includes a transition period in which recipients receive both paper and electronic bills for the next three bills. It offers customers the option of paying their bill via the email or regular mail, and says if they decide to keep paperless billing, “it’s yours automatically.”

But customers who want to keep their old paper bill have to take action to stop the automatic switch-over.

“Not your style?” the email says. “ . . . Click here to keep your paper bills. You’ll receive only the first bill by email.”

At last year’s end, 297,498 customers had enrolled in paperless billing, a sharp increase from 2013, when just 90,077 did. PSEG took over management of the electric system for LIPA in 2014.

Rick Kowalski, 79, of East Patchogue, said while he hasn’t gotten one of the emails, he intends to opt out if he does. But he isn’t happy with the way PSEG is going about it by forcing an opt-out.

“It seems a little sneaky number one, and number two, I’d rather have something in front of me that I can make a check to,” like an old-fashioned paper bill, he said. He added the practice may be particularly troublesome for senior citizens who “may have diminished memory or function.”

Paperless billing helps the utility by reducing mailing costs and saving trees, while encouraging customers to use electronic payments over checks and snail mail. Electronic payments have also jumped since PSEG took over the system, from around 5 million in 2013 to just under 7 million at last year’s end.

David Gaier, a PSEG spokesman, said the utility has sent out the message to some 200,000 customers, the most recent in a group of 50,000 last week.

Thus far, he said, the utility is seeing a 75 percent “adoption rate,” meaning only around 25 percent have opted out.

“The reason we’re doing an opt-out is that there’s a lot of evidence and data . . . that the adoption rate increases significantly only if and when customers can actually experience the benefits,” Gaier said.

He added PSEG has made it “very easy to opt out, with a single mouse click on the mail.”

For those who don’t read the email, he said, “there are notices in each of the following three monthly paper bills letting them know that they’ll be moving to paperless unless they opt out.”

They can also opt out by calling PSEG, going to a walk-in help center or the company’s website. Gaier said even if customers opt out of the program, studies show just knowing about it can make them happier.

But ratepayer Kowalski said he isn’t one of them.

“I don’t think it’s fair,” he said of the need to opt out. “It’s the same as somebody sending me something through the mail that I never ordered. You can’t do it.”

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

Mark Harrington, a Newsday reporter since 1999, covers energy, wineries, Indian affairs and fisheries.