CMP says its service has improved, penalty should be lifted

File photo Maine's largest electric utility on Tuesday said it has improved customer service and that a financial penalty weighing on company finances should be lifted.

Write a Comment

By Jessica Hall

Central Maine Power Co. on Tuesday said it has improved customer service and that a financial penalty weighing on company finances should be lifted.

The utility, which had been slammed for inaccurate bills and difficulty handling customer service calls, said it has met or exceeded a set of service standards imposed by the Maine Public Utilities Commission in March 2020.

CMP, which is owned by Orange, Conn.-based Avangrid Inc. (NYSE: AGR), has increased staffing, enhanced training and education, made process improvements and organizational changes, CMP said in a news release.

As a result, the utility reported, it has been answering 87% of customer calls within 30 seconds, providing timely, accurate bills over 99% of the time and proactively applying a $25 credit to any bill that was not delivered on time.

In the wake of its improvements, the state’s largest utility requested that it be relieved of a financial penalty that has cut its earnings by $9.9 million, the largest such penalty imposed by the PUC in recent history, the regulator said at the time. CMP had been cited for customer service failures and mismanagement of a new billing system.

“I am proud of the hard work that has taken place over the last year and a half,” said CMP's interim president, Scott Mahoney. “Even though this 18-month period is over, we are not taking our foot off the gas. We will continue to use these metrics as benchmarks moving forward to ensure customers continue to receive the highest quality of customer service.”

The PUC said it would review CMP’s filing.

“The commission will review CMP’s filing and evaluate whether the problems the service quality metrics were intended to address have been remedied,” PUC chairman Phil Bartlett said in a statement.

CMP also faces controversy surrounding a power line project in western Maine that crosses public lands, as well as an effort from critics to force a buyout of CMP and Versant Power to create a consumer-owned utility. Voters will weigh in this fall in a referendum on the $1 billion transmission line project, which aims to bring Canadian hydropower to the New England power grid.