Hydro One Complaint
Ontario, Canada
http://www.hydroone.com/
905-944-3307
I have to refresh my memory of what happened with Hydro One as this went down around August or September of 2011.
I moved from the house I was renting & of course didn’t get my last bill until after I moved. Since I moved out of the country, it took me a lot longer to get settled then if I was just moving closer. Moving is stressful enough.
Anyway, I continued making small payments to the account writing them down on my last Hydro One bill, but it was a mess & I take responsibility for it being a mess. Normally I print out a new bill for each month, but obviously there wasn’t going to be any new bills.
Then one day I called Hydro One & asked if I had paid everything off. I wasn’t sure & instead of me adding all the amounts up & guessing which number was the balance & which were the payments, I figured I would just call instead.
I spoke to someone who I’m SURE told me I had made all the payments, so I thought I was all set.
I had had my mail forwarded to my sister’s in the States & she’s not very organized, nor does she tell me about all my mail all the time.
A month or two later my sister mentioned something briefly about how a last payment was owing to Hydro One & if it wasn’t paid by such & such a date, etc., so I called Hydro One again & spoke to someone else (sorry I don’t have names right now, but if you need them I can pull up the letter I wrote) & he also told me I didn’t owe anything.
I’m sitting here thinking this is all just a mixup on their end & so I let it go.
Another month or two goes by & then my sister faxes me some mail & it’s a notice from a collection agency for $33 or something in that range for Hydro One. Needless to say I was FURIOUS.
This is when things went from bad to worse with Hydro One. I tried to clear things up with one guy, but he treated me like total garbage. It became clear after a few minutes that he was trying to catch me in a lie. He started mocking me making it seem like I couldn’t do math, telling me, “of course you knew you owed the money”, etc. etc.
I asked to speak to his manager & she was just as bad as he was. Again she tried to make it seem like I was lying over $33. I told her plain & simple, pull the collection agency out of the deal & I’ll pay you the $33. Or, give me a letter stating you will do that once I’ve paid.
She REFUSED!
I was LIVID.
I think at that point I called again & was told the only way to complain higher up was to write an e-mail, so I did.
I received no response.
How can a company like this treat me in this way. I’ve been a customer of theirs for I don’t know, the last 25 years & this is the first time something like this has happened & this is how they train their staff to handle a good customer?
I also called the collection agency & you know how they are, total assholes. When I told the guy I would only pay through Hydro One, he started bullying me & talking down to me, so I hung up the phone on him.
I knew this was getting really bad & going nowhere, so I started dealing with the Ontario Ombudsman. The woman there wasn’t much help. She was either busy or just daft because she didn’t quite get what was going on, but she did say she would call them. I was upset because of the collection agency & I wanted that stopped so it wouldn’t ruin my credit rating.
I had to wait & I never heard back from the woman at the Ombudsman when she said she would get back to me. In the meantime the collection agency guy had started to harass me.
I had to follow up with the Ombudsman woman again & she didn’t return my call. I was going to speak to her manager when finally she returned my call all shocked like, “I was told you want to speak to my manager?” No apology for not calling me when she said she would, but fine, I let that go & just wanted to get this resolved.
The entire time she was giving Hydro One all the time they wanted to resolve this & I was NOT going to wait around & have my credit rating ruined because Hydro One could care less about screwing up & this Ombudsman woman was letting Hydro One get away with it.
At one point I had to really lay it into her as it felt like she was going to sweep this under the rug just because I owed the $33 even though it was Hydro One’s incompetent staff & rude bullies that needed to be held accountable.
Finally she called again & someone at Hydro One said they would call me & resolve the issue with the collection agency.
Do you think anyone called me???? NO, but all of a sudden the collection agency guy stopped calling me & I knew Hydro One wiped out the account.
While I’m happy with the results, the stress I had to go through being treated like garbage by Hydro One’s staff & not even an apology is shocking. While the Ombudsman woman helped me, she didn’t want to. I had to force her & I shouldn’t have to force the governing body to oversee Hydro One.
Just thought people should know what Hydro One did over $33.
Michelle
