> I've lived all over the US. Why are utility company websites SO BAD? All of them are terrible.
Utility companies are deliberately regional monopolies, without the threat of competition there's no incentive to do better. That's presumably reflected in but not limited to the quality of their web sites.
In California, PG&E refused to hand over legally-required documents, in addition to refusing to hand over ordinary information that they were not required to hand over. Subsequently, a pipeline in San Bruno (updt) area exploded, a dozen houses burned to the ground, and several people died. They established new legal precedent by being convicted of Murder One.
investigations subsequently determined that PG&E had falsified reports, and failed to conduct testing that was required by law.
> Subsequently, a pipeline in San Mateo area exploded, a dozen houses burned to the ground, and several people died.
I recall the San Bruno gas explosion[0] you're referring to. It happened at a time when I regularly drove down that leg of Skyline to access Pacifica and Ocean Beach coming from south bay via the peninsula/280.
We clearly need better solutions for how such utilities are delivered and their businesses operated. Though in the case of residential gas lines, we should probably just stop the practice, especially in seismically active regions like the bay area...
It doesn't reduce their income to have a bad website, and might save them a bit in dev costs (maybe not though? if not, there's an opportunity to sell them on better sites)