Decent rate and the lights are still on
“
Now that I've covered all the nice things in the title...here's the rest of the story:
My previous provider raised rates - I looked for a better deal on PowerToChoose and found this company. I filled out my enrollment with a requested switch date. They did indeed switch on my requested date...but the first I heard from them about it was ~2 weeks later when they sent the first bill (here's how much you owe us...oh BTW welcome new customer). They are not set up for BillPay through Bank of America and it's a confusing situation: MidAmerican Energy (apparently a utility in Iowa) is set up in BofA's system, but MidAmerican Energy *Services* is not, and they both use the same logo with a typeface so small I defy anyone except company employees to recognize the difference. I found this out after a call to "customer service" and got a bit of attitude about not having discerned this on my own. Anyway, I am now set up to send them paper checks through the BofA BillPay system - seems like we could do better in the year 2018, but it will get the job done.
I can't really complain because, like I said, they're giving me a pretty decent rate and the lights are still on. There's really not anything wrong here, but from my perspective, I'm not impressed with the way they run the business. I expected more from a Berkshire Hathaway company...but then again, who am I to question Warren Buffett's business strategy. Maybe the lesson here is that customer relationship management is actually an unnecessary business expense and this is the kind of customer service we should expect once the rest of the business community discovers this for themselves and follows suit. ”
July 18th, 2018
