RUDOLPH BROWN/CHIEF PHOTOGRAPHER
JPS crew repairing a utility pole in Kingston recently.
Leonardo Blair, Enterprise Reporter
"HERE WE go again." I sigh as I push open the entrance door to the Spanish Town branch of the Jamaica Public Service. After almost three weeks since my last fight with the customer service agents here about my last light bill, I am back again. For days the customer service agent who had promised to have the matter investigated could not hear her telephone ring whenever I called. "We are having a little trouble with our phone lines," she would tell me later on.
There are about 20 people in the waiting area. I figure this should not take long. My matter isn't new. They should have answered my call from September 2 and today was September 13. How lucky can I get? I walk up to the security window and tell the guard that I would like to speak with the customer service agent. I tell her why I am there; that the agent had told me to call her back personally for the results of my light bill investigation.
"Take a number," she tells me.
"What?"
"Take a number," she repeats.
I look around at the fully-seated room, then glance at the other customers
standing painfully. I thought about my last six-hour waiting ordeal on August 24 then turned to the security guard, slightly seething.
"I am not taking a number. If you
people had the decency to answer your phone lines in the last week I would not be here right now. I don't have another day to waste. Tell Ms. Griffiths that I am here to find out what the result of my last meter reading is."
The security guard looks me up and down.
"What is your name? Is she expecting you?"
"Not really," I say. "But she knows about my case, just tell her I had called her on September 2."
She (guard) disappears from the counter for a while then comes back with a message.
METER READING
"Mr. Blair, she says your current (meter) reading is 213kWh ..."
"Yes!" I screamed in my mind about to celebrate.
"... But you will still have to pay for the last light bill," she ended the message.
The sweetness of the 213kWh message turned bitter instantly with the "have to pay" ending.
"What! You must be crazy, I am not paying for 622kWh for one month!"
The guard rolls her eyes at me and I demand to speak with Ms. Griffiths. She disappears from the window again. When she returns, she says Ms. Griffiths would call me on the telephone in the waiting area in a while. I wait until the phone rings. The guard picks it up and says it's for me, still rolling her eyes.
I tell Ms. Griffiths (the agent) that I cannot in good conscience pay over $9,000 for 622 kWh of energy I know I did not use. She tells me she will have me talk with the customer service manager, Mrs. Sonia Jones.
After a short wait, I eventually go inside to speak with Mrs. Jones. I explain to her that since 'Ivan' last September, my average energy consumption had gone up from just over 200 kWh to over 600 kWh for my August bill. I explained my dilemma to her.
I first complained about the bills in April and explained that at the time I demanded that her technicians check out the meter on the house.
The technicians checked the meter in May and found it infested with ants and declared it defective. They said they had no new meters in stock to change it at the time and would get back to me. A month elapsed and JPS sent me a bill from the 'antsy' meter in July. It had increased to more than $6,000. I went back to JPS and protested for a change of the meter. They eventually changed it a week later.
PRE-IVAN STANDARD
In August, the bill from the new meter readings went through the roof. I complained again and now finally I have a meter reading of pre-Ivan standard. Almost a third of the August bill, 213 kWh.
I tell her as of then I am refusing to pay the August bill, not until she could present me with a credible bill. The Office of Utilities Regulation told me I shouldn't pay them a cent once my bill was under investigation.
She tries to explain to me that the new meter was showing that in two months I had used over 800 kWh of energy after admitting that the 622 kWh looks like a faulty reading. I tell her, 'No kidding'. She says based on the two-month consumption and figures from the previous month, my household is estimated to have consumed an average of more than 400 kWh of energy for the incredible bill period.
I told her, with all due respect, that what she was telling me was ridiculous. She insists that she cannot take anything off the bill despite my insistence. I tell her that I want to pay my light bill. She tells me that when she has that problem, she generally pays what she normally pays while the investigation is going on. I tell her under the circumstances, I can't do that.
I was already paying dearly since Ivan because I hadn't paid attention to the antsy consumption figures. She cannot tell me what to do. I tell her I wasn't leaving until she told me how she planned to settle it.
Seemingly tired of the conversation, she asks for my contact numbers. I gave her my cellular numbers. She asks what about work. I gave her The Gleaner's numbers.
The air hangs heavy in the room for a split second. Suddenly, she's more cooperative. She takes out a card, scribbles her numbers and tells me that she will have her supervisor personally investigate the matter in a week's time. I thank her and walk out still hopping mad.
