ComplaintsforSouth Central Indiana Rural Electric Cooperative

• Initial Complaint

  07/06/2023

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  ****** took down tree and damaged electrical service on 6/29. Within a few hours of outage, a person from ******** came to our door and let us know that he would make sure power was disconnected from transformer, but that the tree/power pole was not safe and to stay away, and that a vegetation crew would come by later and cut tree out of the way so services could be accessed and restored. Several hours later, another gentleman came by, and cut the downed power line and double checked transformer to ensure it was not live. This gentleman also stated that we were to stay away as it was unsafe, and a crew would be by later to cut tree out of way and restore services.The next morning, another representative from **** came by the property and spray painted several markings on the ground around the downed pole/lines. This gentlemen re-iterated the statement that WE WERE TO STAY AWAY FROM THE **** AND DO NOT ATTEMPT TO CUT OR MOVE AS IT WAS UNSAFE.Over the course of the next 6 days, no crews came to our property to clear tree or restore services. I contacted the **** call center on multiple occasions (6/29 4:40pm, 6/30 2:20pm, 7/3 9:50am-10:38am-11:07am-5:51pm, 7/5 10:24am -- spoke with either ******************************** ****** (or another similar name beginning with 'S')). Each time I called, I was told that crews were still out working, and that we should be patient, and that crews would be out eventually to get service restored. At 11:04am on 7/5, **** contacted me back, and stated that they would NOT be coming out to clear the tree from the lines/poles, and that we were responsible. They also stated that they would NOT be restoring our service until we got a licensed electrician to come out and place a 'meter base or pedestal' on our property -- contradicting every statement that was given to us in the 6 days prior. As of now we have been almost an entire week without power, and have 3 young children, 2 of which are asthmatic and have not had access to nebulizer

  Business response

  07/17/2023

  Were sorry to hear that you had a negative experience with ********. We take member feedback seriously and are working hard to make sure that this doesnt happen again in the future. 

  The storm on 6/29 caused significant throughout our 7-county service area. We assure you crews were working around the clock to restore power to the ****** members who were out of service.

  We did work directly with our operations team to ensure your particular situation was resolved as soon as possible. Please accept our sincerest apologies for any miscommunication during your outage.
  

  Thank you. 
  

  Customer response

  07/17/2023

  Better Business Bureau:
  
  I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID ********, and have determined the response would not resolve my complaint.  For your reference, details of the offer I reviewed appear below. 
  
  Thank you for your response, however, the issue has never been about the outage.  We understand that certain circumstances are out of anyones control.
  

  The issue is that for 7 days 171 hours without power a dozen or more employees of your company all told us the same thing: DO NOT TOUCH THE DOWNED TREE OR UTILITY POLE(S), SOMEONE FROM ******** WILL BE OUT TO FIX AND RESTORE POWER.  Then, suddenly, on day 7, the statements we received from ******** completely contradicted all the previous statements.  After numerous additional calls to ********, we were told that ******** WOULD NOT be doing anything to the downed tree and utility poles, and that it was our responsibility to have these issues corrected.  We then had to contact an emergency electrician and tree service to come to our property to address these issues again, AFTER 7 DAYS WITHOUT POWER.  We had to pay $3,350 for the tree and utility poles to be removed and electrical damage repaired.  I feel that this is completely unacceptable, and there has been no attempt by ******** to remedy this situation in any way.
  
  Regards,
  
  *************************
  

• Initial Complaint

  06/29/2023

  Complaint Type:

  Customer Service Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  I just got off the phone with a customer service "supervisor" named *****. Where she tried to turn around the failings of SCI and her rep onto me. It does not matter how much a customer upsets you, you just don't behave like that. I was in the right about criticizing SCI for poor service, poor equipment. I called to report an outage and criticize SCI for poor equipment, but the rep cut me off and actually hung up the phone. I called back to address that hang up, "*****" attempted to lie and say their power went out. I don't believe that. Was further confirmed because "*****" confirmed that the rep did hang up on me citing the call itself, which she claimed she would review, but she also jumped to say that the call was bad (on me) before even listening to it. She also cited a previous phone call for the reason why her and the rep both planned ahead about the complaint. ***** did not know that after my last complaint and the last storm, I went out to really review ******** and I found out from local residents abroad, face to face, they do have widespread poor service and equipment. One can see this right away from your ****** reviews which were verified by my face to face interactions. I see firsthand that the ****** reviews were 100% accurate. I see what's going on here as someone who knows what fraud and narcissism looks like. When you have poor service, it does no good to try to cover it up with poor customer service. ***** was acting that way and the junior rep and completely without apology and trying to place the failures of SCI on me. And yes, I am demanding a response on the power grid issues and of course I am demanding accountability on "*****" and her junior rep, which I believe was "*****" lying the whole time. Please look for the first rep I spoke with on 6/29. That was the one who hung up. Furthermore, "*****" admitted that they contacted each other about me to set up poor customer service ahead of time before I could reach "*****."

  Business response

  07/05/2023

  Were sorry to hear that you had a negative experience with ********. We take member feedback seriously and are working hard to make sure that this doesnt happen again in the future. Please accept our sincerest apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused.

  Thursday's storm caused significant throughout our 7-county service area. Crews have been working around the clock restoring power to over ****** members who were out of service. We continue explore ways to improve reliability for our members. 

  Thank you. 

   

  Customer response

  07/05/2023

  Better Business Bureau:
  
  I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID ********, and have determined the response would not resolve my complaint.  For your reference, details of the offer I reviewed appear below. 
  
  Company said nothing about accountability and did not reach out to me directly to apologize.  I also emailed the board about it and it was also ignored which is why I went to the BBB.  Business is just running "screen" and I do not believe they actually did anything for accountability.  Would have been way different if they reached out to me directly to tell me how they processed accountability with at least one member of the board reaching out by phone or email stating that this was abhorrent behavior by them.  That did not happen.  As you can see, they are "screening" themselves by just saying "sorry" "won't happen again" and then they went on to add an excuse about storms, which has nothing to do with their customer service attitude.  You would never see this with Duke Energy.  Storm or not.  Because **** takes customer service seriously.  This is a common trait you will see in sociopaths, narcissists, and psychopaths, because they do not feel empathy or remorse.  The business response was without empathy or remorse, opting to blame something else instead of themselves.  That's exactly what their customer service team did as well.  They attempted to blame me, not their poor attitudes.  
  
  Regards,
  
  *************************
  

  Business response

  07/06/2023

  I called and spoke directly with the member about his concerns, suggestions and the steps ******** is taking to improve the member experience in the future. 

  Thank you,

  *****

   

  Customer response

  07/07/2023

  Better Business Bureau:
  
  I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID ********, and have determined the response would not resolve my complaint.  For your reference, details of the offer I reviewed appear below. 
  
  ***** did call and apologized, but it was also met with a lot more excuses and her trying to use the storm as an excuse over and over.  Also, when I confronted her over her employee's attitude issues, she again, tried to offer up excuses to protect them.  I was 100% correct that ******** is putting their employees above their customers.  The whole "member" thing is just false advertisement and propaganda.  Some groups do that just to give an illusion that customers belong and have a choice, but clearly with ********, this is an illusion.  As another customer put it and I paraphrase:  "why would they care?  They are getting money regardless and have a monopoly on the area."  This is very apparent in *****'s initial responses and the ****** reviews and also the customer service reps when you call.  They really do have an "I'm above you" "I am royal" thing going on over at that company.  This makes sense because there is no real competition, similar to any monopoly or even a government agency.  The money is coming in guaranteed, no competition, there is protection, "we can say and do whatever we want."  Again, been all over the country and this is the first utility company where I have seen this.  Not the first ********************** but first utility company.  Only when I gave her a set of questions designed to test her empathy and remorse, did she finally become honest and admitted that the behavior was not acceptable.  Which was good that she chose to start being honest and I thanked her for that.

  She did claim that she would implement accountability and make changes through various means and I told her that I had a hard time believing that.  Because I have seen this so many times, especially with true customer service (think *******************) being nearly gone in the ***, replaced by "me first."  However, I challenged her to prove me wrong.

  I encourage ***** and ******** to understand this universal principle that goes beyond business if you think about it.  "You exist because of the customer, the customer does not exist because of you."  I can do the same thing for farming, since I worked on farms when I was a kid and have a lot of respect for farmers, but the same principle applies.  "You exist because of the farmers, the farmers don't exist because of you."  Same thing can be applied to truckers and distribution.  When it comes to energy, the customers are the financial powerhouse.  In reality, ***** and her team owe everything to their customers, but I do not think they fully understand that.  Unfortunately again, with utility monopoly and I believe ******** takes advantage of that, it's difficult to guarantee that customers are being treated fairly.

  However, I invite ***** and this company to prove me wrong by making changes to respect the customers first, employees second.

  Lastly and I waited to see this.  ***** spoke yesterday about accountability and making changes.  Just three hours ago posted, I looked at this ****** customer's review with someone from ******** responding.  Because I wanted to see if ***** had sent anything out about the need for customer service improvement.  And this ******** rep does not acknowledge the poor customer service that the customer complains about, again, opting to just blame the storm.

  "It was reported then on Monday I spoke with a woman explaining our situation. My husband has end stage COPD, on oxygen 24/7, uses a nebulizer 4 times daily. My neighbor found the problem with a fuse or whatever its called hanging down on a pole between our properties. I explained this to the woman that its a quick fix but all Im ever told is go somewhere else."

  Which is a contradiction to what ***** and I had spoken about.  So, I don't think ***** took our phone call very seriously, as I surmised and expected.  I just seriously doubt that people in this company from leadership to junior roles have regular empathy or remorse.  "Me first" "Royalty" "I am above this" "We control the spice! (for you Dune fans)".

  As of right now, I am hoping for these poor people that Duke moves in and takes this territory, eventually.  And I do want these conversations and notes posted publicly because I do want people in the ******** area to realize what is going on, not just at the surface, but the underlying mindset which drives the issues.  "I rule these people!"  A contradiction to the "member" model.  An illusion to manipulate and maintain control.

  Regards,
  
  *************************

  
  

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