Hydro One reacts to damning Ombudsman report

Morning North8:11Hydro One reaction to damning report by Ont. Ombudsman

The Ontario Ombudsman is calling Hydro One a liar and accusing it of extortion. We reached Laura Cooke, the Senior Vice-President of Customer and Corporate Relation at Hydro One for some reaction.

A spokesperson for Hydro One says the utility is taking recent comments by Ontario's Ombudsman about its collection practices "to heart."

• Ombudsman urges Hydro One to stop sending threatening letters

In a report released Wednesday, Andre Marin didn't shy away from words like "cruel" and "deceitful" in accusing Hydro One of extortion in the way it has tried to force payment on outstanding bills. 

Marin said the utility has been threatening to cut off people's electricity, even during the winter months — something that contravenes Hydro One's own policy. 

He said he told the utility that threatening disconnection letters, though largely hollow in effect, "must stop." 

The vice president of Customer and Corporate Relations with Hydro One said they've "taken the Ombudsman's comments to heart."

"We've changed the letter now," Laura Cooke said.

Letter re-written, again

That letter is at the heart of Marin's latest criticism. He said he told Hydro One to change the disconnection threat weeks ago, but the complaints to his office kept rolling in. 

Cooke said the offending letter has been re-written again. 

"It was clear that [Marin] wasn't satisfied with the changes we made to the disconnection letter ... [it] now does says that we will not cut people off during the winter months," she said. 

"With any luck, he'll agree to the new wording in the letter." 

Cooke was adamant that Hydro One does not threaten to cut people off without plenty of opportunity to address outstanding bills.

"One of things that we try to do with customers is ensure that people keep their accounts current," she said.   

"Before a customer gets a disconnection notice ... we've had a long discussion with that customer. We've probably had a friendly reminder phone call, a friendly letter, another phone call, another letter. So this disconnection process is at the end of a very long communications practice."

Cooke also said Hydro One looks for ways to help people keep the lights on. 

"We recognize that some of our customers are having a challenging time and so we talk to them about instalment plans or payment plans."

Marin has been looking into Hydro One billing for 13 months. To date, the number of complaints he has received recently passed 10,000 — the highest total for any of his investigations to date.

Marin's full report is slated to be issued in the spring.