New computers and computer programs are good, right?

But T.W. Phillips Gas and Oil in Butler found out that a new operating system can cause all sorts of headaches when it comes to customer billing.

Jay Dawson, company solicitor and spokesman, said Thursday a new customer information system installed late in 2010 caused a log jam in billing with some customers not receiving their August or September bills until December.

“A subset of customers had their bills delayed for two or three months, so for the last six weeks to two months, we’ve been working to correct the problem,” Dawson said.

For the most part, the company has caught up on sending bills out and is giving customers the same amount of time their bills were delayed to balance their accounts.

For example, if a customer’s August bill took three months to be issued, the customer has three months to pay that bill.

“We hope this will all be resolved in the next 60 to 90 days, and calls to our customer service department have already dropped off,” Dawson said.

He said the billing glitch has nothing to do with the company’s new owner, SteelRiver Infrastructure Fund North America.

“This was a system change planned for a long time by Phillips,” he said.

A notice in T.W. Phillips customers January bills confirms the sale to SteelRiver, which has its headquarters on Pittsburgh’s North Shore. It also owns Peoples Gas.

The sale is expected to be completed by April.