4 Delivery

High Bill Alert (non-AMI) emails are not regularly-scheduled communications. They are triggered based on specific criteria. For example, an alert is triggered when a customer reaches a certain percentage of usage above their typical baseline. The messages must be delivered within a particular delivery window. The rules that govern alert delivery follow.

Waking Hours: Messages must be delivered during waking hours (between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.) in a utility-specific delivery window. You cannot choose the specific time to send.

Weekdays: Messages must be delivered only on business days (Monday-Friday). They cannot be delivered on weekends.

Non-Delivery Window: Messages cannot be delivered during the configured non-delivery window, which is during the specified number of days after bill period starts and before a bill period ends. The purpose of the non-delivery window is to ensure customers do not receive an alert too soon after their bill period starts, or too late in the bill period to be useful.

The default non-delivery window settings specify that alerts should not be delivered within seven days after a new bill period starts or within seven days before the bill period ends.

For example, suppose a customer is billed on the third day of every month. For the July 3rd bill, using the default delivery settings, Oracle Utilities could send an alert anytime between June 10th (seven days after the bill period starts) and June 26th (seven days before the bill period ends).

Delivery Frequency: Messages are limited to being sent once per billing period per service point to avoid excessive alerting.

Seasonal Delivery Consideration for Dual Fuel: Electric-only and gas-only versions of the alert are supported. Messages are generated separately for each fuel type, and there is no combined-fuel version.

For dual-fuel customers, a separate gas and electric version of the alert can be sent in the same bill period. However, this could potentially result in customers receiving two alerts per month, totaling up to 24 alerts in a year. To avoid excessive and overlapping communications, most utilities choose to align the sending of the alerts on a seasonable basis, sending gas alerts during cold seasons, and electric alerts during warm seasons.

Delivery Tools: Oracle Utilities uses third-party tools to send messages. These tools provide Oracle Utilities with information on bounces, opens, opt-outs, and click-throughs.

Emails and Attachments: For email alerts, the email content is delivered directly in the email message with no attachments. This makes it more convenient for customers to quickly view the information, and it makes the emails less likely to be blocked by spam filters.