Class Action Alleges Conservice Illegally Withholds from Calif. Renters How Utilities Bills Are Calculated

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A proposed class action alleges Conservice has violated California law by failing to allow renters to view upon request the formulas it uses to calculate their pro rata, or proportional, share of master-metered utilities and other property-wide charges. 

The 25-page case contends that Conservice’s “refusal to produce this information,” including invoices, is unlawful and without a valid basis. Conservice’s withholding of utilities information from renters, even upon demand from legal counsel, serves to only “obscur[e]” illegal upcharges of utilities and other property-wide obligations for individual tenants, the lawsuit alleges. 

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According to the complaint, Conservice contracts with the landlords of apartment complexes and mobile home parks throughout California to administer utility billing from electricity, water, gas, water heating, pest control, trash and sewer services. As part of its services, Conservice collects and reviews all utility bills, aggregates them, and then issues monthly invoices to collect money from its clients’ tenants, ostensibly on a basis proportional to their utilities usage, the suit relays.

When a tenant contests a bill, or merely asks for clarification on certain amounts, however, Conservice “uniformly and systematically refuses to provide a transparent accounting of the basis for their bill,” often citing purported “contractual,” “confidentiality,” or “privacy” concerns, the filing alleges. 

If a tenant asks for the exact calculations for how Conservice came up with the amount it claims they owe for any particular service, the company, the case claims, “will only point to vague disclosures on their bills,” which uniformly fail to provide any insight into how the billed amounts are tallied. 

“Even if a consumer hired a lawyer and a demand is made for calculations and basis of contested bills, Conservice uniformly, and systematically, refuses to provide the basis of and calculations for the utility bills they present and charge to consumers,” the complaint says. 

Under California law, landlords and their billing agents cannot charge sub-metered tenants any more than if they were billed directly by a utility provider, and renters must be credited for any rebates the landlord received, the suit relays. The law also dictates that landlords and their billing agents must act transparently with respect to billing practices, including by providing within seven days of demand the most recent master-metered water and electric bills, the case adds. 

The suit says that after being contacted by the plaintiffs’ legal counsel in early 2022, Conservice provided more detailed calculations purportedly showing how the amounts billed to the renters were tallied but “still refused to provide the underlying master-metered or property-wide bills,” purportedly due to client confidentiality. 

The lawsuit looks to cover all current and former tenants of multi-dwelling residential buildings and motorhome parks in California who, within the last four years, were invoiced by Conservice for any utility or property-wide services and requested that the company provide the underlying master-metered or property-wide bill and/or calculations substantiating the charges. 

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