National Grid, Liberty Utilities fined for poor customer service ratings

Jun. 20—Two north country power companies were fined by the state Public Services Commission for failing to meet customer service standards last year.

The PSC announced Thursday that it has levied a combined $23.5 million in fines on five utilities in New York because they did not provide adequate customer service as determined by customer surveys.

Liberty Utilities, which also does business as St. Lawrence Gas, was fined $39,000.

National Grid, which is the business name for the former Niagara Mohawk Power Corp., was fined $1.2 million.

Those fines are automatically being applied back to ratepayer bills.

The Central Hudson Gas and Electric Corp., New York State Electric and Gas Corp. and Rochester Gas and Electric Corp. were also each fined millions of dollars.

"Our Office of Consumer Services staff conducted an in-depth review of the utilities' successes or failures in meeting their respective customer service performance measures filed as required by each utility's respective rate plan," said PSC Chair Rory M. Christian. "Ensuring that the utilities operating in New York state maintain good customer service is a top priority for the commission. The negative rate adjustments being announced today are company financial enforcement payments for missing specified customer service metrics."

Each corporation is evaluated on four specific metrics. National Grid, as Niagara Mohawk, failed to earn a positive rating in a combined commercial and industrial customer service satisfaction survey. The company is meant to maintain a 78% approval rating, which it barely missed with a 77.9% actual approval rate. That resulted in three so-called "basis points" and a fine of $1.2 million.

Liberty Utilities, as St. Lawrence Gas, is required to maintain an 86% approval rating in a customer satisfaction survey. It achieved an 82% positive rating, resulting in 15 bias points and an $39,000 fine.

The worst performance last year, and the highest fines for this year, came from NYSEG, which provides electrical and gas service to parts of nearly every region in the state, including most of the southern tier, the Finger Lakes, the southern Mohawk Valley and around Plattsburgh.

The company failed on all four metrics evaluated by the PSC; call answer rate, a customer satisfaction survey, accuracy of estimated bills and rate of complaints made to the PSC itself. The combination of failures led to 39.87 bias points and an $11.4 million fine.