Bad Snohomish PUD Customer Service Experience

If you've read this blog much you will know one of the reasons I have it is the curse of bad customer service. And before you say, "Maybe it's me." it's not. I always start off nice and friendly.

For example I recently decided to sell my house that I have been renting out the past couple of years. So last month, I moved the renters out, cleaned the place up, and put it on the market. I figured it would be a good idea to have electricity in the place while waiting for the sale to go through.

So I called Snohomish PUD in Washington State to setup the service for a month. When speaking to the agent I asked if I could have the bill sent to an international address which I gave her. She put me on hold and came back saying that wasn't possible. Fine I thought, I really only wanted the service for a month. She gave me the account number so I figured I could just look it up online and pay it that way. During our conversation she looked up the account I had with them previously so I assumed everything was fine.

About a week after my conversation with them, I received a bill in the mail at my Irish address for a deposit. Three things that bothered me about this. First of course that they wanted a deposit. I lived in that place for 10 years, had service with them for 8 of those 10 and paid the bill on time just fine. The second thing is that they spelled my name wrong. And finally, the obvious one is that they were, in fact, able to mail a bill to an international address.

So I called customer service, waited online for 20 minutes to speak to someone who wasn't all that friendly and gave me three options. The first was to pay the deposit. The second to send them a copy of a utility bill proving my good service with a utility. And finally to get a copy of my credit report and fax that in to prove my worthiness of having service with them.

Here's the thing, yes I could do all that. I could just pay the deposit, cancel the service in a month, get the deposit back. Now that I know they mail to an international address, I'd get the refund check. But I'd have to get it deposited and all that hassle.  I could find a copy of my utility bill in Ireland, which they probably won't accept because it's international and that's the way companies like this work. I could also go online get a copy of my credit score and fax it to them. But I don't want to do any of that. To lookup my credit score dings the score as we all know. And it's just a lot of hassle. Then after doing that I'd have to print it, fax it, etc.

I just wanted to have the service for a month while the place is on the market. So fine, I told her just cancel it. They don’t want to make money from me, even though it's only a month, then they won't. prospective viewers of the place will just need to look at it during the day.