Evergy pays $500K to settle client safety investigation into nugatory warranties

Kansas’ largest electrical utility, Evergy, should pay $500,000 for allegedly violating client safety legal guidelines by sponsoring dwelling electrical warranties that offered no profit.

Lawyer Normal Derek Schmidt’s workplace introduced the settlement between prosecutors and Evergy in a information launch Wednesday. Evergy was not ordered to pay restitution. Requested what number of prospects have been affected, Schmidt’s spokesman, John Milburn, mentioned “different entities associated to this matter stay beneath investigation” and the workplace couldn’t present extra data. 

Of the $500,000 cost, $480,000 will go to Schmidt’s workplace and $20,000 will repay investigative funds.

Evergy agreed to pay the state as a part of a consent decree and doesn’t admit to the state’s allegations.

In response to the information launch, Evergy’s predecessor, Westar, was affiliated with HomeServe USA from September 2014 via December 2019. By means of the affiliation, Evergy “sponsored and permitted electrical dwelling warranties that failed to offer a fabric profit to customers and made materials misrepresentations in violation of the Kansas Shopper Safety Act.”

As a part of the consent decree, Evergy, going ahead, should present a disclosure that it was compensated to be used of its emblem in advertising and marketing supplies and won’t permit third get together corporations to make use of its emblem “in a approach {that a} cheap particular person would consider the solicitation originated from Evergy.”

Evergy’s spokeswoman, Gina Penzig, mentioned in an announcement that the settlement “resolves an excellent authorized concern associated to HomeServe’s advertising and marketing of its merchandise to Westar Vitality prospects years in the past.”

“Evergy denies any authorized violation, and the settlement is just not an admission of wrongdoing by Evergy,” she mentioned, including that Evergy didn’t proceed Westar’s contract with HomeServe after Westar and Kansas Metropolis Energy & Mild merged to kind Evergy.