They’re probably on an even-pay system where the estimated use is the monthly average bill and they end up with a debit or credit at the closeout of the billing year. Their utilities, however will up their bills because they took in less money while power was out and they have to pay the overtime for all of those union local linemen whose unions turned away free help from out of state non-local-union linemen. The free help would have cut into the windfall profits (overtime) of the union linemen.
Read the original article please, not just the excerpt. One customer tried to submit an adjustment online and was not refused due to not being on an appropriate payment plan for that; he was refused due to the system blindly estimating that his adjustment was too large.