PSEG UPDATE- Reimbursement for Food and Medicine Losses Due to Outage

See Excerpt  from Newsday:

PSEG agrees to reimburse residential customers up to $250 for spoiled food

By Mark Harringtonmark.harrington@newsday.com @MHarringtonNews Updated August 17, 2020 2:34 PM

PSEG Long Island on Monday said it would reimburse customers who experienced an outage of 72 hours or more for some food and medicine losses in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Isaias.

The new policy will reimburse residential customers for spoiled food up to $250 in losses, while commercial customers such as restaurants can receive up to $5,000 in reimbursements, PSEG said. It’s unclear how PSEG intends to pay for the reimbursement, or how much it’s expected to cost.

The announcement came on the same day PSEG Long Island president and chief operating officer Dan Eichhorn called the company’s “frustrating” performance in response to Isaias “an anomaly,” and pinned a giant part of the problem on a computer system that was supposed to tally and manage outages.

Eichhorn spoke during a hearing of the Nassau Legislature about the utility company's response to the Aug. 4 storm that caused extensive damage across Long Island, leaving about 420,000 customers without power.

For those looking for reimbursements, residential food losses of $150 and under must include an itemized list of the food lost, while food losses over $150 require an itemized list and “proof of loss,” including register receipt, canceled check or photos of spoiled items, PSEG said.

Medicine lost will be reimbursed up to $300, PSEG said. Customers will have to provide an itemized list and proof of loss, including pharmacy prescription label or receipt.

For commercial customers, PSEG requires an itemized list of spoiled food and proof, including invoices or bank statements.

Customers can file for reimbursement at www.psegliny.com/claims and must file claims by Sept 16. It could take up to 60 days for reimbursement.

State Sen. Todd Kaminsky (D-Long Beach), who was among local leaders to call for the reimbursement policy, along with Nassau County Executive Laura Curran, said the policy was “the least they can do.

While the policy should be inclusive of more customers and more generous, this was a just result and a rare victory for the average taxpayer against a powerful utility — but our efforts must not stop there,” he said in a statement. The Senate will hold a hearing on PSEG on Aug 20.

PSEG and LIPA as a general policy don’t reimburse customers for weather-related losses, according to terms in the LIPA rule book, but neighboring utility Con Ed announced earlier this month that it would, for upward of $540 for residential customer losses.

“Given the unique combination of circumstances, we believe the right thing to do is to expand our claims process to ease the burden on the customers most impacted by Tropical Storm Isaias,” Eichhorn said in a statement.

PSEG has taken on withering criticism to its response to the storm, including customers’ inability to get through on telephone, online, text and mobile app communications lines, and the failure of the company’s ability to estimate customer restoration times.

Eichhorn said during the Nassau hearing that the company and its employees were equally frustrated by those problems and PSEG was doing a “deep dive” to find the root causes of the problem and deal with them.

https://www.newsday.com/long-island/pseg-nassau-leg-hearing-1.48215610