RG&E and NYSEG facing penalties for subpar customer service
[anvplayer video=”5182351″ station=”998131″]
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Two public utilities that serve thousands locally will be penalized millions.
The New York State Public Service Commission says NYSEG and RG&E failed to meet its customer service standards. The penalties will be assessed through reduced customer revenue by $8.72 million for NYSEG and $5.9 million for RG&E.
Four other utilities were faulted by the commission for a record $22.5 million, which is nearly 10 times higher than the $2.3 million in penalties assessed in 2021.
News10NBC has been investigating billing and customer service issues with RG&E and NYSEG for more than a year.
More about RG&E billing issues:
- State attorney general looking into RG&E customer service number after News10NBC investigation (March 17)
- RG&E’s toll free TTY number goes to scammers (March 17)
- Palmyra family gets $13K bill from NYSEG (Feb. 9)
- Public packs hearing on RG&E billing, customer service issues (Feb. 7)
- 7k RG&E bill turns into 8K bill credit which turns into a shut-off notice (Feb. 2)
- How to fight back against RG&E billing errors and shut-off notices (Feb. 2)
- Customers express frustration at virtual forums about RG&E billing issues (Feb. 1)
- Billing and customer service problems continue at RG&E (Jan. 24)
- Following News10NBC investigation, state regulators expand probe into RG&E and NYSEG (Dec. 28)
- Frustrated homebuilder encounters more problems with RG&E (Dec. 16)
- Greece housing development slowed over struggles to get RG&E power (Dec. 12)
- RG&E billing chaos continues (Nov. 30)
- New Business Spends 17+ Hours Trying to Get RG&E to Hook up Gas Line (Nov. 4)
RG&E/NYSEG have released the following statement to News10NBC:
“The Public Service Commission’s revenue adjustment announcement today reflects customer service and reliability performance, in which NYSEG and RG&E continue to make significant improvements and investments. In fact, the Companies have already made significant improvements to customer service, drastically lessening customer wait times above the required metric, improving the accuracy of billing, and hiring hundreds of new staff to reverse the severe Pandemic-related staffing impacts on monthly meter reading and billing.
The Companies also continue improvements on reliability, replacing tens of thousands aging poles and other equipment that contribute to outages, which impacted 600K homes across the state in 2022 alone. These are very real actions the Companies are taking daily and that are outlined in the joint rate proposal with PSC.”