Powerless against the power company

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My Open Letter to Oncor Electric Delivery:

Celeste Bird says she cannot communicate successfully with anyone at Oncor Electric Delivery about the repeated power outages in her Grapevine, Texas neighborhood.

Even before the recent cold weather and heavy snow made the problem worse, she says, the power regularly went out for at least half the neighbors on her street.

“You have to work hard to even get a person at Oncor, and they won’t tell you anything,” Bird said. When she does reach someone, she says, she gets a “from-the-book answer saying maybe next time they will check into it.”

Many complained this month that they couldn’t get information from Oncor about when power would be restored after snow and wind caused half a million residences and businesses to go without electricity, some for an extended period.

These days, with emerging technologies such as Facebook and Twitter, it’s easier than ever to communicate with customers — if you want to. So on behalf of Bird, her neighbors and many others, The Watchdog last week wrote an open letter:

Dear Oncor,

What do you do now to communicate with thousands of frustrated customers who call in with complaints, specifically about power outages and also recent high bills?

From my mail, it appears that these recent weeks are among the most difficult times for Oncor in recent years. I hear about more complaints which you are receiving than ever more. More requests for meter re-reads, questions about smart meters, theories of no-show meter readers and inaccurate meters.

I sense a lot of frustration among your customers. They say it’s difficult to get information from you. They wonder, because they are dealing with an automated phone system, if complaints are received properly. They don’t like the lack of human contact, the inability to give feedback. They don’t like NOT knowing if a power restoration crew is scheduled, when it will come, when power could come back on.

The public wants you to be more accessible, more transparent and more available to help them in their times of need. It seems like you aren’t using technology as best you could. In this age of fast-moving communication, it would seem that Oncor could do more than use automated phone lines to take information.

I wonder why you don’t make this information available on a Web site so we can check the latest. This, as you know, is the most basic form of easily distributed rapid information — for free — and customers are clamoring for it.

I received calls from people who wanted to know how they could find out if their power would be turned on? What do I tell them?

I can’t think of another product we buy each month that we understand less about how you bill and whether the price and quantity are correct. People are supposed to trust your systems and equipment. Yet people feel a loss of power and control of their lives when it comes to electrical power.

The Watchdog

Oncor spokeswoman Carol Peters responded.

She checked Oncor records and confirmed that Bird has complained many times, even to the Public Utility Commission of Texas. But, she said, “there’s no way for us to tell a customer when their power is going to be turned on.”

The great snowstorm of 2010 was Oncor’s worst winter storm ever. Complaints were up, but that was not unexpected, she said.

Rather than dwell on Oncor’s recent unpleasantness, Peters wanted to focus on the future. She promised that greater transparency is coming to Texas’ largest electricity transmission company.

A new Web site is about to be unveiled by the state, working with the large transmission companies, both she and a PUC spokesman told me. Customers will be able to log on and retrieve more detailed information about their electricity usage and bills.

When is this coming?

“It should be announced fairly soon, but it will be the first step toward total visibility on your electric bill,” Peters said. “It’s almost finished.”

The second part of the transparency movement, she said, is the installation of smart meters, scheduled for completion by 2012.

When smart meters are installed, Peters said, customers won’t have to call utilities to report outages. Utilities will already know because a smart meter sends back usage information every 15 minutes.

“This is the brave new world we are heading for,” Peters said. “This is a transformative period for Oncor.”

Until the smart system is installed and while more old-fashioned methods are used, Peters said Oncor is interested in doing “anything we can to improve communication before we deploy” the new meters.

Celeste Bird says she and her Grapevine neighbors can’t wait that long, adding, “Maybe it’s time for some competition if the one choice we have for service can’t provide the type of service we pay for.”

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Dave Lieber, The Watchdog columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is the founder of Watchdog Nation. The new 2010 edition of his book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, is out. Revised and expanded, the book won two national book awards in 2009 for social change. Twitter @DaveLieber

By Dave Lieber

For me, the good news about Texas electricity is that I have used five different power companies in the last five years and not once has the power gone out for any reason other than bad weather.

Uninterrupted power. That’s about the only good thing I can say.

Otherwise, it’s all bad. Costs are too high. Companies offer such confusing rates and service plans that many Texas consumers feel like victims of bait-and-switch schemes. And those whose electrical provider went bust found themselves slammed into high-cost plans.

The Texas Legislature started this mess in 1999, when it passed a law deregulating the electricity marketplace. Until recent months, Texans were paying some of the highest electricity rates in the nation.

State lawmakers met again in 2009 and did not pass legislation that would have made some of the shady marketing practices illegal. Fortunately, the Texas Public Utility Commission issued some new pro-consumer pricing rules that went into in May 2009. Shopping for an electricity contract is now simpler and fairer than before. Click here to read the new rules.

Why should you care? Answer: as I originally shared exclusively with readers of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram – one of Texas’ finest newspapers – you can save hundreds of dollars a year. When it comes to making your family’s decision about which power company to choose, you have to be your own watchdog. Sometime in 2010, when your current contract is set to expire, you will have to make major decisions:

Will you stay with your current company or switch to an unknown? Should you extend the contract for a year, a half-year, three months or go month-to-month? What about a fixed rate versus a variable rate?

Here’s The Watchdog’s gift to you – The 2010 Guide to Picking the Best Electricity Provider:

1. TXU no longer rules. Get over the idea that TXU Energy, most likely your original provider, is the only company that can offer solid, uninterrupted service. And don’t believe the fallacy that TXU customers get serviced first when power goes out.
2. Oncor Electric Delivery is responsible for maintaining the transmission system. Everybody, TXU and its many competitors, uses them to handle repairs.
3. Switching is good. Act under the assumption that you should switch companies every year. The market is constantly changing.
4. You can find better deals and save hundreds of dollars a year, maybe even more, with this one decision. Electricity is measured by kWh, or kilowatts per hour. If you pay 10 cents a kWh instead of 14 cents, your monthly electric bill could be $100 or more lower.
5. Know your current contract terms. Before you can shop, know what you have. Do you know your kWh rate? It’s on your electric bill, and it might be higher than what’s available now. (In Texas, it ranges from 8 cents to as high as 25 cents.) Also call your provider and ask for the date when your contract expires. Find out, if you don’t know, whether your rate is fixed or variable. Start planning a possible switch two months before a contract expires.
6. Decide whether you want to play it safe or be a gambler. Do you want to lock in a fixed rate that you can afford for a longer period of time? Or are you willing to take a low price now and understand that a variable rate could spike depending on market conditions?
7. Conduct a thorough search. Go to this Web site: www.powertochoose.org. (If you don’t have an Internet connection, visit your public library and ask your librarian for help. Or ask a friend or relative to help you.) Click on “Go Directly to Offers”, and then enter your zip code. Also, check the company’s own Web site. Sometimes the company’s price might be cheaper than powertochoose.org
8. Pick your poison. In the left-side column, under “Rate Type,” pick either fixed or variable. (The Watchdog likes fixed since current market conditions are too volatile.) Under “Price,” type in a range of from 7 cents to 14 cents. That’s a good spread. Then hit submit.
9. Study the results. For the selection cited above, about a dozen companies last week offered rates between 8.9 cents per kWh and 13 cents. Contract lengths varied between three and 24 months. Each service plan comes with links to “Terms of Service,” “Facts Label,” “Signup” and “Special Terms.” When you click on these, you learn the nitty-gritty details.
10. Check out your favorite. After you find a company with a rate and contract length you like, learn more about them. Return to the original page, www.powertochoose.org, and click on “Customer Complaint Statistics.” The link marked “Residential Retail Electric Provider Complaint Scorecard” leads you to a state scorecard showing complaint ratings for a six-month period based on a four-star system, similar to movie ratings. Except, here, you don’t want four stars. Another link on the home page, called “REP Complaint Summary,” shows you what the complaints were about.
11. Check out other sources. If the company comes out good enough on complaints, dig a little deeper. What are angry customers saying about this company? To find out, use an Internet search engine this way: Put the name of the company in between quote marks and then follow it with the word “ripoff.” Do the same with the word “scam.” If only a few results come up from disgruntled customers, don’t worry. But if there are several dozen, do a search for the company’s name and “Better Business Bureau.” You’ll be able to pull up the company’s report in the BBB region of its headquarters.

Final switch tips. When you make your final selection, don’t call your current electricity provider to cancel. That could cause problems. Sign up with the new company, and it will handle the transfer. Try to sign up at least four to six weeks before your plan expires so the overlap between the two billing cycles is negligible. Some people switch too late and pay higher prices during the transition.

Remember, there’s no loss of power when you switch. It happens, and you don’t even know it.

Until the bill comes.

The battle cry for residents in a seniors community in Fort Worth, Texas goes like this:

“I’m gettin’ beat ’cause I want to use some heat!”

Residents tried to figure out why their electric bills have doubled in the past few months.

Last week, they called a meeting and invited me. They showed me their bills, almost all of them from TXU Energy. They had a lot of theories about what went wrong — meters not read properly, for example.

After I bit, as I first reported in the Jan. 31, 2010 Dave Lieber column in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, I gave them my initial expert opinion.

It was bitterly cold in late December. Of course bills go up.

But then I dug deeper into their cases, looking at their bills and asking each resident two crucial questions:

What kilowatt-per-hour rate do you pay?

When does your contract expire?

Almost nobody knew the answers. Their problem, it seems, is much worse than high winter bills. Most likely, these residents are paying more than necessary because they haven’t shopped around for electricity. Unfortunately, many Texans still don’t know how to do that.

We worked on their cases, and in the end, I hope I solved their problem. Best of all, my solution may work for you, too. But before we get to that, let’s listen to a few of the residents:

Martha Beaman: “My bill was $28 in November. Then, in December, it was $256. And for January, it was $233. I am never at home. I work. This is stressful because my wages haven’t gone up as the bill goes up. I have to calculate every penny I earn because my job has been cut back on hours this month. I’m struggling.”

Shirley Stockton: “I knew the cold weather was coming and cranked my heater down to 65. I turned my water heater off through the cold snap, and the bill still went from $36 to $96. I only turn my water heater on every few days when I need it.” (When she called to tell a TXU rep that, she says the rep told her that hot water “is a privilege.”)

Debbie Wilson: Her bill jumped from $78 to $176 to $272: “After I got the high bill for December, I cut my thermostat to 67. I use oxygen at night, so I have to have enough electricity to pay for that. I’d rather go cold than not have my air at night.”

Anita Mayfield: Her bill went from $64 to $149. “I’m getting tired of cooking on a microwave. I wear sweats all the time. I have the thermostat turned down to 60 degrees. I wash in cold water. When you live on a fixed income, you can’t afford this. You don’t know where you are going to pay these extras from.”

Charlie Berry: His bill went from $40 to $176 to $227. “At this rate, by the time I get the next bill, I’m going to have to apply for assistance from the U.S. government just to pay my electric bill.”

Steve Kerr: “During the cold snap I was out of town for three weeks with the heating system turned off.” His bill went from $90 to $146 to $236. He is skeptical about whether the meter was read. “Whether or not it was read — that’s the $64,000 question,” he says.

Oncor spokeswoman Carol Peters said later that the bills are higher because this has been the second-coldest winter in the past two decades. “There’s a 30 percent increase in the heating requirements over last year,” she said. Oncor delivers the electricity through the lines and hires the meter readers. TXU is the residents’ retail provider by their choice.

TXU spokeswoman Sophia Stoller looked at 13 cases of Providence Village residents provided by The Watchdog. All but one seemed accurate, she said. In the questionable case, the initial bill looked too low.

TXU offers several ways for customers to get help with their bills, including a 10 percent discount as part of the Low Income Discount Plan. But you have to ask. TXU Energy Aid helps customers who say they have a hardship, such as loss of job or illness.

When I looked at the residents’ bills, I found that many are paying as much as 13, 14 or 15 cents per kilowatt-hour.

However, last week, the state-run PowertoChoose.org Web site showed the lowest prices I’ve seen — 8.5 cents per kilowatt-hour.

So the quickest way to lower your electric bill is not to turn down a thermostat or turn off a water heater but to learn when your contract expires and shop for a better deal. If there’s a cancellation fee, it will be more than covered in a few months by cutting a 15-cent rate almost in half.

As proof, one Providence Village resident said she paid $250 to cancel her contract before it expired so she could switch to Green Mountain Energy. Her neighbors sighed when Helen Nash reported that her recent bill was only $93.

If you’re not sure about the best way to shop around, I’ve got you covered. I’ve distributed tens of thousands of free copies of my guide showing how to get the best buy in Texas electricity. You can find it by clicking here on “Dave Lieber Guide to Saving on Your Electricity Bill.”

You can also e-mail me at watchdog@star-telegram.com or request a copy at Dave Lieber, Star-Telegram, P.O. Box 1870, Fort Worth, TX 76101.

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What to do If you need help on your electric bill, call 211.

Customers who receive food stamps or Medicaid may qualify for the Lite Up Texas discount or other assistance.

Ask your electric company whether it offers assistance. Also ask to pay a big bill over several months, allowed under law.

On Feb. 3, 2010, Tarrant County Human Services will take applications from those who are retired or on disability and receive no other income. Call 817-531-5620 on Wednesday and ask for an appointment. Only 500 appointments will be scheduled.

Source: Tarrant County Human Services

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Dave Lieber, The Watchdog columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is the founder of Watchdog Nation. The new 2010 edition of his book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, is out. Revised and expanded, the book won two national book awards in 2009 for social change. Twitter @DaveLieber

Look at this tree.

Bob P.  from Arlington, Texas sent me this photo of his backyard tree, cut by Oncor Electric Delivery’s tree-pruning company.

“Only someone with a sick sense of humor would ‘prune’ a tree the way the one in my backyard was cut,” he says. “The Oncor contractor and the rest of his team probably laughed about it all day long. It would have been merciful to cut the entire tree to the ground.”

For years, I’ve received heart-breaking letters from folks whose trees are butchered by Oncor Electric Delivery, which serves one-third of Texas. Oncor owns the lines and transformers that the retail electricity providers offer homeowners and businesses.

As I shared in the Nov. 29, 2009 Dave Lieber column in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Oncor has operated an ineffective, poorly-managed, non-communicative and disorganized tree-trimming program.

Now along comes Grapevine Mayor William D. Tate.

Tate is one of America’s finest mayors, and his town, not surprisingly, is the best little town in Texas.

This is one more reason he gets the title.

Tate is an old-fashioned, handshake mayor. He could easily have been a U.S. Marshall a hundred years ago. Now he’s taken Grapevine to the highest heights. And he’s taking on Oncor for the butchering of hundreds of trees in the best little town in Texas.

“I feel like The Watchdog on this,” he told me.

Tate is a watchdog that won’t let go.

Turns out Oncor has messed up trees in other area towns, too. Homeowners complain that when they call for information about tree trimmings on their property, they can’t get any information. When the trimmers arrive, they often don’t speak English.

Tate complained to the Public Utility Commission. He said that got their attention. And it did.

I recently attended a summit with Tate, a few other mayors and top officials of Oncor.

Oncor is overhauling its tree trimming program.

The most important part is the addition of mandatory “customer sensitivity” classes for supervisors of the five tree trimming companies used by Oncor.

Oncor has also created a toll-free number (1-800-518-237) for homeowners who have questions when tags are placed on their door. Usually, a tag means a tree trimming crew may come in five days or so to trim away from electricity lines.

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See for yourself. In this brief video by Dave Lieber, I show you some examples of Oncor’s tree trimming work in Grapevine.

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More information

Visit www.oncor.com/trees.

- State law prohibits residents from trimming trees near power lines.

- Oncor urges homeowners to use Oncor-sent trimmers or hire their own qualified trimmers.

- Homeowners can also pay to bury lines underground.

- Homeowners should avoid planting spreading trees within 50 feet of power lines.

- Read Texas law here about overhead power lines.

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Dave Lieber, The Watchdog columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is the founder of Watchdog Nation. His book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, won two national book awards in 2009 for social change.

I don’t have a lot in common with State Sen. Troy Fraser of Horseshoe Bay, Texas. He chairs the Texas Senate committee that writes laws regulating business and industry.

I, on the other hand, investigate and write stories for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and WatchdogNation.com about what happens to folks when the laws he writes do not work

But both of us are extremely bothered by secretive groups. Both of us have found ourselves standing outside the doors of an electric co-op meeting, not allowed in. Fraser did something useful with his initial rejection a couple of years ago from a board meeting of the Pedernales Electric Co-Op, of which he is also a member. He tried to pass a law earlier this year in the Texas Legislature subjecting these secretive electric co-ops to state open records and open meetings laws. Electric co-ops fought it, and it didn’t pass.

For my Fraser-like experience, I was shown the door recently at a members’ only meeting at Tri-County Electric Cooperative. In the video you can see me get turned away. (Sorry for the jerky camera, but I was testing the tiny Flip Mino. I wasn’t undercover, just holding the minuscule camera.)

WatchdogNation.com finds it so unacceptable that in this Era of Transparency in government – local, state and federal governments are making more information public than ever before – these little good-ole-boy clubhouse holdouts still exist everywhere where you can’t get any idea of what is going on. It’s so, well, darn un-American.

Electricity is serious stuff in Texas and everywhere else. Forty-seven states have electric co-ops. Every little bit of information given to consumers helps. But these co-ops, as shown in this classic study by an consultant of the most crooked co-op in Texas, Pedernales, show the way corruption can flourish when unchecked.

My study of Tri-County’s secretive ways began months ago when resident Paul Thompson asked me for helping in digging up information.

We both ran into a one cold stone wall – Tri-County Executive Vice President and General Manager Craig Knight.

The co-op, which brings electricity to residents in 16 North Texas counties, is run, like many others, as the secretive fiefdom of one man. Knight earns about $300,000 a year, according to one of the few government disclosure documents the co-op has to file. Knight’s father ran the co-op before him. Not much else about him is known.

You can read my latest study about Knight and his secretive ways in the Dave Lieber Watchdog column here in the Nov. 1, 2009 Star-Telegram.

This video shows my “Troy Fraser moment” standing there, trying to get in to watch the co-op elect a new director. But that never happened. I didn’t get in. And there was no true election.

Previously, Knight had told me I could attend only if the membership approves, but he never even offered them the opportunity that night.

Turns out there were only 90 people inside, not enough to make the 3 percent quorum, so as my detailed report in the newspaper shows, the election wasn’t held and the nominee, who has held the job for three decades, was reelected without opposition.

Other watchdog groups keep an eye on their co-ops, such as CoServ Watchdogs and PEC4U.org. Bravo for them. Tri-County and many other co-ops don’t have peering eyes.

U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee writes in his study of co-ops: “Too many electric co-ops have turned away from their historic role as exciting, pro-consumer organizations and have instead taken on deeply troubling anti-consumer behaviors.”

As co-op activist John Watson said in the Dave Lieber column, “Co-ops, everywhere as far as I can tell, need a beady eye cast on them by members and the press. Most operate with a lack of transparency.”

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Dave’s new book — Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation — won two national book awards for social change in 2009.