Sometimes the ineptness of corporations is breathtaking.
Consider Liberty Utilities. They are a monopoly that, in these parts, provides water to Pine Bluff, White Hall and other communities. They got themselves into a jam a few years ago when cold weather hit and their water system collapsed. The jam was serious enough that the state Public Service Commission demanded that they improve their service, giving Liberty a long list of to-do items.
Then Monday happened. On that day, White Hall Mayor Noel Foster wrote a letter to the state attorney general’s office asking for an investigation into Liberty for a variety of ills, including non-billing, questionable backbilling and water meters that, when brought into question, are not properly tested for accuracy, among other things.
In response, and it took only a couple of hours for the decision to be made, AG Tim Griffin said he would be happy to oblige.
“As the state’s designated advocate for ratepayers, I take allegations of overbilling seriously and am committed to getting the facts and getting some answers,” Griffin said in the statement, adding that he would direct his agency’s Public Protection Division to investigate the problems.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
The word from various parts of the street has been that Liberty was behind on its customer billing, and apparently that situation came to a head in White Hall, where Foster said it was an everyday ordeal to have to help residents figure out their water bills.
Foster said the Liberty employees in the local office in White Hall are very accommodating, but that they too are clueless about how to remedy some of these issues. As Foster said he has been told, customers can go into the office there to pay a bill — because they haven’t been getting one at home — and the staff is unable to print out a bill. As one person said they were told, just pay what you think you might owe.
Foster, who seems like someone who is slow to rile, finally reached that point.
“I hate to be like this; I’m just a country mayor,” Foster told The Commercial shortly after sending the letter. “But we’ve got to get something in place to protect our citizens and consumers. I’ve got 18 months of emails with Liberty on these subjects. If this was getting any better, I would not have taken this action. But it’s not getting any better.”
For its part, Liberty issued a statement to The Commercial saying they are working on the problem.
“We hear the concerns raised by our customers and White Hall Mayor Noel Foster,” the company stated. “We have been and continue to actively work to address these concerns, and we are fully committed to making the necessary improvements to our billing and customer service practices to better serve our customers. We also look forward to sharing information with attorney general Tim Griffin regarding the actions we have taken since our transition to a new billing system to address the billing issues that some of our customers have experienced and the ongoing plan to continue improvements to our billing practices.”
There are several things wrong with that statement. The most striking remark is the one that claims the company is hearing anything. By all accounts, they are quite deaf. If Foster has been trading emails with them for a year and a half and this is still going on, what other conclusion can one make?
A responsible water utility, one that considers its customers as entities to be respected, would have gotten the word out far and wide to the affected communities that there was a problem. We can even imagine a press conference where the problems were laid out and customers were given alternatives for staying current on their bills. Instead, Liberty stuck its collective head in the sand and hoped no one would notice the shambly mess their billing system was in. At least, that is the way it looks.
Liberty also claims it looks forward to explaining all of its woes to the Attorney General’s office. Wouldn’t it have been so much better if Liberty had looked equally forward to sharing all of its woes with its own customers?
White Hall is hardly the only place where this is an issue. As Foster pointed out, Missouri has opened its own investigation into Liberty because of, you guessed it, billing and customer service issues.
It’s quite exasperating. Liberty needs to take a hard look at its own corporate responsibility and culture. One of the knocks against Liberty during the big freeze a few Februarys ago was that the utility couldn’t be trusted and that there was no transparency. If they learned anything from that painful episode, it is unclear what it was. They continue to leave customers in the dark when they could — novel idea here — put themselves in the customers’ place and then act on what is in their customers’ best interest. But from all appearances, for Liberty, customers are just an afterthought.