Snohomish County Pud

PUD sucks like no other businesses i have ever encountered. We’ve already been without power for 64 hours this year and counting. Tonight we are going on the third outage that we have had this year. If any other business performed like PUD they would go out of business. Must be nice to have monopoly.

I just called to set up our first account with this company and I’ve never been talked down to like that in my entire life. The «customer service rep» I spoke with was horrendously rude and seemed to be very annoyed at having to help a customer set up service. The tone she used was offensive, to say the least. I can almost understand her being so awful if I had been speaking to her in a rude way or if we were late on our bill, but we are a first time customer and I was definitely not speaking to her in such a tone. What gives?

These people are spawn of satan himself! They state they will help you figure out a «payment plan» if you can’t pay the bill but then give an option that doesn’t even resemble a payment agreement. For example: you must pay $ 250 today and $ 250 tomorrow. Does that look like a payment plan? All their customer service reps are rude and not helpful. I wish I had another option but these monopoly’s force us to deal with low lifes like SNOHOMISH PUD. They threatened to turn my power off on a day when my mother was having an emergency surgery and I told them I would leave the hospital to come pay them but it would take me an hour to get there. I was able to get there within 45 minutes and they informed me that within the time it took me to get there they disconnected my power. These people are hateful heartless human beings.

Snohomish County PUD is simply lacking. I’ve been a customer for 10+ years at different households and each time service was lacking.
In the greater Marysville area (my current residence) the lights flicker and power often goes down for a second or two. It has burned out several electronic devices and has forced me to invest in multiple battery systems to prevent expensive computers from dying. I find the frequent power outages (or power hiccups) very inconvenient and expensive.
I can hear the same issues around my neighborhood when walking around the community, as all of the homes have ‘chirping’ fire alarms that go off when there is a fluctuation in power (it is somewhat comical.)
On the billing side they seem to be completely incompetent. I’ve had power randomly shut-​off with moving dates, a complete failure to communicate issues, and zero communication beforehand. They keep resetting my phone number on the account to a number I stopped using five years ago, but are very happy to re-​instate service for a $ 120 same day connection fee.
This is on top of the fact that instead of actually knocking on the door and getting a payment, the PUD employees sneak in and don’t even ring the doorbell. On two instances I’ve literally been standing five feet from my front door when they walk up and then run off. Other utilities in the area happily communicate a missed payment and have the courtesy to knock on the door.
Executive members such as General Manager Steve Klein need to rethink the simple failure to communicate with customers (and the community) using modern tools. In a day an age when e-​mail, text, SMS, Twitter, Facebook, and *face to face* customer service options exist, it is shocking to see how they drain long term customers of $ 120 reconnection fees because of faulty service practices and antiquated customer management systems.
Running an organization that services the community should entail interacting with the community and not avoiding bad billing/​customer service issues that gouging the customer for a reconnect.
I can only assume that the Snohomish County PUD drives a substantial amount of revenue at the end of the month on $ 120 reconnects and have simply come to conclude that these charges are a hidden cost of living in the area.

I feel very fortunate that we have a public utility district. It empowers me to know that the infrastructure and technology belongs to us! Because we are serviced by a not-​for-​profit agency the focus can be on conservation rather than consumption. I am proud to live somewhere with enough foresight to have provided this for our community.

Snohomish PUD wants to charge $ 10 for a late fee even though I was out of state and tried to resolve this issue. Representatives were very insistent on charging this fee even though 5 calls were taken to convince PUD to resolve this matter (Late fees were charged on late balances even when issue was resolved). It created a lot of hard feeling but PUD will not reverse its policy… hence this complaint.
We need to convince PUD that this is not good policy.
Thanks.