National Grid complaint department

[peter d]

I was wondering if anyone else under National Grid (Narragansett Electric, Massachusetts Electric, Niagra Mowhawk or Granite State Electric) has experience a complete breakdown in customer service?

Let me illustrate: We are doing a 4 family renovation job and had to add a landlord/house meter to the service. It gets inspected and approved (weeks ago) and call is made to NG to go ahead and energize the service. Weeks pass, nothing, and finally they get around to scheduling the cut in.

Last week my boss gets a call from NG. "The service wasn't tapped in, so we didn't put in a meter." My boss says "That's YOUR job." Apparently they dispatched a meter crew before they dispatched the line crew. (They had to relocate the drop slightly, and make up the new connections.)

The worst part is that it's nearly impossible to get a hold of anyone that has a clue there. Also, to add insult to injury they have consolidated all of their technical services to an office an hour north of here.

This is just a simple 100 amp service. I don't even want to know what getting a big service energized is like.

 

[cpal]

did you talk to customer service or engineering??

 

[mdshunk]

You really need to start collecting linemen's cell phone numbers.

The other trick is to call and report an outage at that address.

 

[electricalperson]

customer service with our power company used to be pretty bad. probably gotten a little better havnt heard much complaints from anyone. we had a rep from the poco come to our IAEI meeting to address that issue

 

[JohnE]

It does help to build some contacts withing the company. I had a ton, but many took the early retirement a few years back.

How's this one, though: I had a work order for new construction for 3 houses for a builder. 3 services called in one day by wiring inspector. 2 energized in about a week, 3rd one doesn't happen. After about 20 phone calls, they have no record of the work order or the inspector calling it in. I am 100% positive that both took place, and the inspector had records of calling it in....Anyway it was easier to start over and get a new w.o. than to try to prove them wrong....

 

[abe72487]

Problem?

Problem?

If this continues I would get phone numbers of the governing body for these utility companies. Most are governed by some public utility commission at the State level. This usually gets results

 

[electricalperson]

my boss actually had to call the president of the company around here to get results

 

[peter d]

did you talk to customer service or engineering??

I'm not sure, as it was my boss doing the talking. I think he was talking to whoever would actually answer the phone. :roll:

 

[Pete Benoit]

We have had similar problems with this same company just getting meter sets.They have begun to use contractors to set meters and they are not performing so well at times.Icant figure it out but I think these contractors are the former national grid employees

 

[peter d]

They have begun to use contractors to set meters and they are not performing so well at times.

They are using sub contractors for a lot of their line maintenance and construction as well.

 

[chris500]

This isn't new, or localized. The more the companies try and cut costs, the less responsive they tend to get. More and more responsibilities get lain on fewer and fewer people; coupled with more experienced people taking early retirement or leaving. Welcome to the future!

 

[tom baker]

Our local POCO is investor owned and a few years ago they laid off all the company linemen and contracted this work out, there goes the experience.
They joke the phone number is 1-800-who-cares.
They are very hard to contact and disorganized, no feedback or followup.
One time I got upset and called the state utility and transportation commission. They said "Mr Baker we are sorry that you are upset with your service from them. But we only regulate there rates not how they do business".
Perhaps I should buy a few shares of stock and attend an annual meeting.

 

[James@CHA]

I have dealt with NG on many projects.

Always call the Contractor or Business line, and be very nice.

If you are completing a service upgrade or addition, place an ESO with NG as soon as you can. Typically after an ESO is issued, you will be abel to call back and find out who the "planner" will be and set up a site meeting with this person prior to commencing work. THat usually eliminates alot of questions.