PSEG Long Island apologizes in aggressive bill collection furor

PSEG Long Island’s high official issued a public apology Wednesday whereas LIPA and PSEG launched a collection of probes, audits and reforms in response to feedback by a former PSEG supervisor detailing aggressive bill-collection practices.

“I personally and the entire PSEG team are in complete agreement that those comments by our former PSEG employee were totally unacceptable,” mentioned PSEG Long Island president and chief working workplace Scott Jennings at a Long Island Power Authority board assembly Wednesday. “We own the issue, we’ve taken this very seriously and we apologize for his comments.”

The supervisor’s commentsmade at a convention in March in discussing utilizing shutoffs and different aggressive ways to get prospects in arrears to pay up, have already led to a statewide investigation after expressions of shock by Gov. Kathy Hochul and Public Service Commission Chairman Rory Christian following stories in Newsday.

LIPA Chairwoman Tracey Edwards known as the feedback “unacceptable and deeply troubling,” saying they raise “broader questions collection practices, buyer interactions, coaching, oversight and departmental tradition.”

She mentioned duty for “restoring public trust and driving reform ultimately rests with this board.” PSEG Long Island last year was awarded a $493 million, five-year contract renewal by the LIPA board to manage the electric grid.

Edwards read a resolution, unanimously approved by the board, that called for an expanded LIPA review of credit and collection practices to include “protections for seniors, medically vulnerable individuals, and low-income households.” It also called for working with peer utilities, customer advocates, union leaders and other stakeholders to review best practices and reforms.

The resolution also committed LIPA to reviewing two years of PSC and customer complaints related to debt collections “to identify patterns, risk and areas where reforms may be needed.”

PSEG has already suspended shutoffs for collections and launched an inner evaluate, Jennings famous, and lately held a companywide “stand-down meeting” the place some workers from the shopper group “have been in tears” over the comments.

“It has created a perception that has overshadowed the good work of many of our employees,” he said. “It goes against the customer-centric culture that we’ve worked hard to build.”

But LIPA trustee Dominick Macchia said the comments of the former supervisor suggested deeper cultural issues.

“Let’s be brutally honest,” he said. “He was your fair-haired boy, he had your highest collections and should you do not suppose he shared that together with his group, I feel you might be mistaken. It wasn’t a one-off. It was cultural.”

Macchia stressed he was not applying that view “to everyone” at PSEG “because it’s not fair to paint everyone with the same brush that way. But say it the way it is. … It was a cultural thing in my opinion.”

While PSEG has suspended shutoffs for nonpayment during its review, the company has not stopped collections by outside agencies, representative Katy Tatzel said Wednesday in a response to Newsday questions.

She declined to say how many third-party collections firms PSEG uses or whether PSEG was continuing to offer an incentive program described in a Newsday story that rewarded the most successful collections firms with more customer accounts.

At the LIPA board meeting, PSEG managers detailed a series of programs to help customers lower or defer payments, and avoid arrears and shutoffs. They recounted several case studies of helping customers in need of defray or eliminating herds through utility or government programs.

“Termination of service is only pursued when all alternatives have been explored and exhausted,” mentioned Lou DeBrino, vp of buyer operations.

But Kristen McManus, New York director of presidency affairs for senior advocacy group AARP, famous that if she’d introduced alongside each member who voiced concern about power affordability, “we might have to maneuver this assembly to Nassau Coliseum.”

“To think that someone who is being terminated would have received a threatening phone call from a PSEG representative that said, ‘Grandma, I’m coming for you,’ is unconscionable,” McManus mentioned. “We know that people are struggling to pay their utility bills now more than ever before. And this is a time of incredible stress for a family. It is not an opportunity to ‘think better in the dark,’ ” as the previous supervisor advised.

Monique Fitzgerald, local weather justice and campaigns organizer for activist group Long Island Progressive Coalition, mentioned she believed the issue was systemic and the “consequence of the corporate greed.” She known as on PSEG to institute extra applications to stop shutoffs, together with those who mirror the total breadth of applications obtainable at different utilities throughout the state.

She identified to the 1000’s of consumers who’ve confronted shutdowns on Long Island and the Rockaways in simply the previous 5 months, together with 3,542 in April alone. “We have to do better,” Fitzgerald mentioned. “We have to be there for the folks that are being shut off so that they don’t get shut off.”