For the 582 Questar Gas customers that were underbilled as a result of incorrectly-set transponders, there's no getting away from paying what they owe the utility. But the silver lining is, the underbilled customers don't have to pay the full amount that they owe.

Under the agreement, each underbilled customer will pay on average $385 for the gas they used. "Each customer will pay back six months of their usage, depending on what that usage was," Michele Beck, director of the Committee of Consumer Services, said.

Questar Gas will write off $480,000 of the total underbilled amount, which is estimated at slightly over $1 million, she said.

"Questar is picking up a big share of the errors because it recognizes the issue could have been handled better," Phil Powlick, the division's director, said.

"It's a fair deal because we've balanced the interests of different kinds of customers," Beck said. "Those who were underbilled will not be burdened with such a large bill, and all other consumers will not be hit with a large price tag for these mistakes."

An investigation in March by the Division of Public Utilities found "fault with Questar for the company's slow response in discovering the transponder errors, and allowing large volumes of unbilled gas to accumulate which resulted in the substantial back-billing of affected customers," the division said in a statement Thursday.

Most of the faulty transponders resulted in usage amounts being under-reported by half, while a smaller number recorded double the actual gas used. Thirty-one households were overbilled $47,500 but have since been reimbursed, Questar spokesman Darren Shepherd said.

So far, Questar's entire customer base of 890,000 customers has already helped pick up the tab for an estimated $375,000 in uncollected bills in the past four years, Beck said.

"That comes up to about 43 cents total for the average Questar customer. But each customer will save about $6 a year going forward because the transponder technology is ultimately more efficient than hiring a Questar technician to go door-to-door doing meter readings," she said.

The division said its report recommended that affected customers be back-billed for six months, rather than the 24-month time period that Questar initially sought to collect. The report also recommended process improvements to prevent this situation from occurring again.

"It's pretty good getting them to write off nearly $500,000, considering that state law did allow the utility to recover their cost," she said. "Questar's initial position is that it didn't have to pay any of it. But the committee made the argument that if the utility is at fault, they can't recover anything. We had a very strong case, and the company moved more than halfway to resolve the matter."

The settlement is pending the approval of the Public Service Commission on Oct. 22.

Meanwhile, it's unclear if the irate customers who filed 61 informal complaints and nine formal complaints with the Division of Public Utilities to challenge the utility's collection efforts are satisfied with the settlement.

"If any individual thinks their own facts and circumstances are different, and warrant looking at differently, they can still seek a different remedy," Beck said.