TL;DR
- Eversource Energy charges Massachusetts customers $102 every time their power is shut off and turned back on for nonpayment, a fee the lawsuit argues bears no relationship to the actual cost of flipping a switch.
- Restoring service costs Eversource virtually nothing: the company uses smart meters that reconnect remotely with a single keystroke, no truck roll, no field technician, no physical contact with your home required.
- Competitors prove the point. Florida Power & Light and Ameren each charge $5 for reconnection. Eversource charges $97 more for the same electronic action. Some utilities charge nothing at all.
- The fee hits hardest when people can least afford it. Customers who have already fallen behind on their bill must pay the $102 on top of every dollar they already owe. The past-due balance is not forgiven; this is a separate charge just for the right to pay again.
- A class action filed in Suffolk County Superior Court on December 9, 2024 accuses Eversource of breach of contract, unjust enrichment, and violations of good faith and fair dealing, seeking full disgorgement of all reconnect fees collected from Massachusetts smart-meter customers.
- The complaint estimates class membership well into the thousands, meaning Eversource may have extracted millions of dollars in fees that, according to the lawsuit, lacked any valid contractual or cost-based justification.
The lawsuit’s own words describe the cycle this fee creates for low-income customers. That language is quoted verbatim in Legal Receipts.
Eversource Energy Charges $102 to Do $5 of Work
A Massachusetts utility built a $100-plus profit center out of a single keystroke. Here is how it works, who it targets, and why a federal court filing argues it is illegal.
What This Fee Actually Costs You
Picture the moment the lights go out. It does not happen slowly. One minute your refrigerator hums, your phone charges, your kids do homework under a lamp. The next minute: nothing. The electricity is gone, and with it the basic infrastructure of a functioning household in 2024.
Then comes the scramble. You are not calling Eversource to negotiate. You are not asking questions. You are doing whatever it takes to get the power back on before food spoils, before the house goes cold, before medications that require refrigeration become useless, before someone in your family has a medical emergency in the dark. The complaint uses the phrase “a mad scramble to try to get power turned back on, at any cost.” That “at any cost” is not metaphor. That is the leverage Eversource collects on.
You call. You make payment arrangements. You are desperate and exhausted. And then, weeks later, there it is on your September bill: a $102 charge you were never told about. Allison Newton, the lead plaintiff, lived exactly that sequence. Her power was cut in August 2024. She called. She made arrangements. Eversource did not mention the reconnect fee. It simply appeared on the next bill.
Here is what that $102 means when you are already struggling to pay an electric bill. It is not a penalty you can appeal. It is not an optional service charge. It is extracted from you at the single moment in your relationship with the utility when you have zero bargaining power, when your home is already dark, when you are already behind, when you are already afraid. And paying it does not forgive a single dollar of what you owe. Your past-due balance remains. You have simply paid $102 for the privilege of being allowed to pay the rest.
The lawsuit describes this fee as “in essence a tax for being poor.” That is accurate. The people most likely to face a disconnection are not people who forgot to set up autopay. They are people managing a budget so thin that a medical bill, a car repair, or a week of missed shifts tips the entire household into crisis. They are the approximately 30% of American households the complaint cites as experiencing some form of energy insecurity. For those families, a $102 junk fee assessed at the lowest moment is not a minor inconvenience. It is another month pushed further behind. And the complaint argues that the cycle is self-reinforcing: the reconnect fee itself makes it harder to stay current, which makes the next disconnection more likely, which means another $102 fee is waiting at the other end of that crisis too.
Meanwhile, in a building miles away, someone at Eversource pressed a key on a computer. That is the entirety of the service for which you just paid $102.
“It is merely a fee to provide consumers with the privilege of paying for electricity again.”
What the Court Filing Actually Says
These are direct quotations from the class action complaint filed December 9, 2024. No paraphrase. No spin. Their words.
Newton v. Eversource Energy — Suffolk Superior Court — Para. 3–4
“Today, smart metering devices and computerized billing automation means service can be suspended or reactivated electronically, with the push of a button at an office miles away… Indeed, paying Defendant’s ‘Reconnect Charge’ does not forgive any past due balance — that amount is still due. It is merely a fee to provide consumers with the privilege of paying for electricity again.”
- This passage establishes the central legal and factual argument: the fee is not compensation for a service rendered. It is a charge assessed for something that costs Eversource virtually nothing to do, extracted under conditions of extreme consumer duress.
- The detail that the past-due balance remains unpaid after the $102 fee is paid is critical. It means customers pay the fee and still owe everything they owed before. There is no debt relief, no grace period, no corresponding benefit beyond the resumption of service.
Newton v. Eversource Energy — Suffolk Superior Court — Para. 7
“The ‘Reconnect Charge’ can have devastating impacts, and itself contributes to a further power shutoffs and consumers struggle to keep current with payments, creating a cycle of disconnect then assessment of ‘Reconnect Charges’ that becomes in essence a tax for being poor.”
- The complaint explicitly alleges that the fee is structurally predatory: it is applied at the point of maximum financial vulnerability and mechanically increases the likelihood of the next disconnection event, generating another fee cycle.
- The phrase “tax for being poor” is a direct legal characterization by plaintiffs’ counsel, not rhetorical flourish. It frames the fee as regressive extraction targeting the segment of the customer base least able to absorb unexpected charges.
Newton v. Eversource Energy — Suffolk Superior Court — Para. 25–26
“Eversource’s cessation of electric service to a household occurs with a keystroke, and is little different that when a user of a subscription website is blocked from accessing the website when payment fails. Reactivation is as simple—and costless.”
- The comparison to a subscription website block is legally precise. Netflix does not charge you $102 to re-enable your account after a failed payment. The complaint argues that Eversource’s technological reality is essentially identical, making the $102 fee entirely detached from any actual operational cost.
- The word “costless” is a factual allegation that will need to be proven in discovery. If Eversource cannot produce cost data demonstrating meaningful per-reconnection expense, this allegation becomes very difficult to defend against the unjust enrichment claim.
Newton v. Eversource Energy — Suffolk Superior Court — Para. 51
“No contract provision authorizes Defendant to charge $102 Meter Reconnection fees in all circumstances.”
- This is the breach of contract argument in a single sentence. The plaintiff alleges that Eversource’s own customer agreements do not provide clear contractual authority for assessing this fee universally, meaning the company may be collecting money it has no legal right to collect under the terms its customers actually agreed to.
- Under Massachusetts law, the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing prohibits a party from using contractual discretion to harm the other party’s ability to receive the benefit of the contract. The complaint argues assessing a hidden $102 fee is exactly that kind of bad-faith exercise of power.
Federal Trade Commission — Press Release, October 11, 2023 (quoted in complaint, Para. 30)
“[M]any consumers said that sellers often do not advertise the total amount they will have to pay, and disclose fees only after they are well into completing the transaction. They also said that sellers often misrepresent or do not adequately disclose the nature or purpose of certain fees, leaving consumers wondering what they are paying for or if they are getting anything at all for the fee charged.”
- Plaintiffs’ attorneys deliberately embedded this FTC language in the complaint to position Eversource’s reconnect fee within a broader federal regulatory framework targeting junk fees. This is a litigation strategy designed to show that the conduct at issue is not a Massachusetts quirk but part of a nationally recognized pattern of consumer harm.
- The FTC’s characterization — fees disclosed only after consumers are “well into completing the transaction” — maps directly onto Allison Newton’s experience. She made payment arrangements with no knowledge of the fee. The charge appeared on her bill a month later, after the transaction was complete and irrevocable.
Who Pays When the Lights Go Out
Public Health
Electricity is not a luxury. Power loss triggers a cascade of immediate health and safety emergencies that the complaint acknowledges explicitly and that existing research quantifies at scale.
- An estimated 1.25 million U.S. households are disconnected from electric service each year, according to figures cited in the complaint. Each disconnection event creates immediate risks to food safety, heating, cooling, and medical device operation.
- The complaint directly identifies the household experience of disconnection as “a major, all-consuming crisis” that constitutes “extreme risks to health, safety, and economic security.” These are not edge cases; they are the standard consequence of the fee’s most likely victims losing power.
- An additional 30% of American households experience some form of energy insecurity, including foregoing food or medicine to pay energy bills. The $102 reconnect fee operates inside this already-stressed population, forcing households to choose between the fee and other survival expenses.
- The complaint notes that post-pandemic energy price increases, especially for natural gas, have compounded affordability stress since 2021, meaning the population of people at risk for disconnection has grown significantly since the moratoria expired.
Economic Inequality
The architecture of this fee is regressive by design. The customers who pay it are already the most economically vulnerable, and the fee makes their situation measurably worse.
- The $102 charge is applied on top of an existing past-due balance. A customer who owes $150 in arrears and pays the reconnect fee has now spent $252 and still owes $150. The fee adds to total household debt without reducing it, increasing the risk of a second disconnection.
- The complaint alleges the fee creates “a cycle of disconnect then assessment of ‘Reconnect Charges'” that functions as an ongoing surcharge on financial hardship, extracted repeatedly from the same economically distressed households.
- Customers have no meaningful ability to refuse or negotiate. Electric service for a home is a practical monopoly. Eversource serves its territory exclusively, meaning affected Massachusetts customers cannot switch to a competitor offering a $5 fee or no fee.
- The fee was assessed without adequate prior disclosure, according to the complaint. Allison Newton was not informed of the $102 charge when she called to restore service. The charge appeared on her September 2024 bill. A customer who cannot afford their bill is structurally unable to plan around a hidden charge they did not know was coming.
- The class membership is estimated “well into the thousands” in Massachusetts alone. At $102 per fee, even a conservative estimate of 10,000 class members represents over $1 million extracted from the state’s most financially precarious utility customers.
What Eversource Said vs. What They Did
The complaint alleges a specific gap between how Eversource represents the fee and the documented reality of both its cost basis and its disclosure practices.
What $97 Means
Every dollar of the gap between Eversource’s fee and what the actual work costs is pure extraction from customers who are already struggling.
Who to Hold Accountable and What You Can Do
The lawsuit names Eversource Energy as the defendant and seeks both full disgorgement of fees and a court order stopping the practice. Here is who is involved and how you can act.
The Lawsuit
- Lead Plaintiff: Allison Newton, Lee, Massachusetts. Her case represents every Massachusetts Eversource smart-meter customer charged the reconnect fee during the applicable statute of limitations period.
- Plaintiffs’ Counsel: Jonathan M. Hixon of Hackett Feinberg P.C. (Boston), Jeffrey Kaliel, Sophia Gold, and Amanda Rosenberg of Kaliel Gold PLLC (Washington, D.C.).
- Defendant: Eversource Energy, headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, principal office in Suffolk County.
- Court: Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Suffolk County Superior Court, Business Litigation Session. Filed December 9, 2024.
- Relief Sought: Class certification, full monetary damages, disgorgement of all reconnect fees collected, injunctive relief to stop future fee collection, punitive damages, and attorneys’ fees.
Regulatory Watchlist
- Federal Trade Commission (FTC): Already proposed a rule to ban junk fees. The complaint directly cites FTC enforcement language. File a complaint at ftc.gov/complaint if you have been charged undisclosed utility fees.
- Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities (DPU): The state regulator for Eversource’s utility operations. Consumer complaints can be filed at mass.gov/orgs/department-of-public-utilities.
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB): Handles complaints about junk fees and deceptive financial practices by companies serving consumers. Submit at consumerfinance.gov/complaint.
- Massachusetts Attorney General: The MA AG’s office has authority over consumer protection violations under G.L. c. 93A, the same statute framework relevant to this case. File at mass.gov/ago.
Mutual Aid and Grassroots Action
- If you are a Massachusetts Eversource customer who was charged the $102 reconnect fee, contact Kaliel Gold PLLC or Hackett Feinberg P.C. to inquire about joining the class. You may be entitled to damages without paying any upfront legal fees.
- Connect with local mutual aid networks and tenant unions. Many organizations run emergency utility assistance funds that can help prevent disconnections before the fee cycle begins. Organizations like Community Action agencies administer Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) funds — apply before you fall behind, not after disconnection.
- Share information about the $102 fee and this lawsuit with neighbors, community groups, and local social media. The complaint’s power depends on class size. Every Massachusetts resident who was charged this fee and does not know about the lawsuit is a potential class member who may never see restitution.
- Contact your Massachusetts state representative and state senator and ask them to support legislation capping utility reconnection fees. The complaint’s framing of this as a “tax for being poor” is exactly the kind of plain-language case that moves legislators.
- Document everything. If you face a disconnection, write down every date, every call, every fee assessed, every dollar paid. This documentation is essential if you join the class or file a regulatory complaint.
The source document for this investigation is attached below.
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