Lake Region Electric Coop

I have had two accounts with these people for 6+ years. Never a late or missed payment during those years. The kind of customer everyone would love to have. After an electrical fire, which we was told may be due to their lines/etc, destroyed our shed, part of garage and AC unit, it knocked out power to our house. We discovered this on Christmas, in the freezing cold, with 3 very young kids in tow. So naturally we called LREC to get the power on again.

Unknown to us they had disconnected the primary account for the house after/during the fire so we only had one "active" account. So they send someone out to check that meter, see it's fine, and then proceed to bill us $75 for a improper service call. We didn't discover the charge until the bill was sent. During future calls to find out why the power was still off they never once felt the need to mention it. It took two more days before they finally sent someone to turn back on the power so we could heat house.

Now here is where the real fun begins. We call to see about the charge and are connected with their billing supervisor. She was totally unsympathetic to the fact our kids had to deal with the cold for two extra days while they figured out what's actually wrong with the power. When pointed out that it was *their* mistake in going to the wrong meter her defense was "It was the only active account. The automated machine says there'd be a charge if there was no need for the call". We kept pointing out that it was their incompetence that led to them going to the wrong meter, not ours. If we called about an outage wouldn't it make sense we'd be talking about the disconnected account? Her response was to just keep repeating it wasn't their fault and was ours. When asked then why didn't we get a call when the service got knocked out, which the Fire Department that put out our fire said they *should* have, her only response was they didn't have to. As we were unable to come down in person and try to settle this mater we sent a family member down there. They proceeded to lie to her that they could have charged us for fixing the actual line too, which while on the phone with us they said that there would have been NO charge had they went to the right meter. So they lied to an elderly woman in order to swindle the payment out of her.

I understand due to the monopoly privilege utility companies enjoy someone can't just choose another provider, but I feel that anyone thinking of moving into an area LREC covers should be aware of their very poor customer service, and billing supervisor who is more concerned with flexing what little power they have in order to feel better about their own failures in life. As long as Angie, the billing supervisor, works there I'd advise folk to expect to be exploited. Because according to her, if they don't have a legal obligation they don't care if they have a moral obligation. As long as she's employed there it can safely be assumed that LREC approves of this type of coldness and blatant lying out of their employees.