Customer service: A monopoly, 27 months and an employee who dug deeper

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I’m a busy person. I don’t wish to spend time each month on routine financial matters. I’ve automated all of my regular transactions. My bills for utilities, homeowners association dues, phone, insurance payments, even my Minnesota Star Tribune subscription, go to an account kept with my brokerage firm, and I fund that account sufficiently so they pay the bills each month. I never see the money going in or going out, unless I choose to, which I do once or twice a year.

In September 2022, my brokerage firm changed banks. My account number didn’t change, but the routing number did. I notified my utilities, homeowners association, phone provider, insurance company and the Strib. They all changed the routing number and all was fine.

Except for CenterPoint Energy. They took in the new routing number, but also kept the old. And in the first month, CenterPoint, like all the others, got it right. Unfortunately, every time thereafter they got it wrong; they tried to pull my bill payment out of my account using incorrect information.

To some degree I was at fault; I entered the new routing number, but left off a digit from my account number. I immediately corrected this, however, which is why they were able to bill correctly in the first month. But then they billed using wrong numbers, over and over.

I called them. Oh my, did I call them. I told them they were billing my account using the wrong numbers although they had the correct numbers.

Outrageous though it was to penalize me for their mistakes, I wanted to rid myself of the problem and the hassle, so I actually paid a year’s worth of gas use in advance (which turned out to be a year and a half because of our mild winter). This, I would note, is not exactly the behavior of an individual unable or unwilling to pay his monthly bill.

Well, the year and a half went by. I now owed CenterPoint money for new charges. They put them through my reinstated autopay. Again using the wrong routing and account numbers. Again, therefore, not getting paid. Again blaming me, not their own errors in using incorrect information even though they had the correct information. Again canceling my autopay.

So I called them again. And again. With no better results, until one time my call was taken by a representative named Melissa. She, unlike everyone before her, actually showed the initiative to dig into the situation, to see if what I was telling them was correct. With the help of a colleague, she established that my information was correct. She and a supervisor, Rishi, actually took the necessary steps to prevent billing using the wrong information and to restore my autopay.

There are a couple of lessons in all this. One is that CenterPoint, as a monopoly, has no real reason to actually listen to its customers and to solve their problems. (“You call that customer service?” David Banks column, Jan. 12.) In my view, they shouldn’t even call their department “customer service,” because it is the opposite; its goal is to get the customer off the phone as soon as possible, not to solve the problem presented to it.

The second lesson is that even within a massive monopoly like CenterPoint, occasionally a single individual (two in this case) actually takes responsibility, actually takes action to solve the customer’s problem.

I’ll add that I’ve lived in the CenterPoint (nee Minnegasco) service area for 50 years. I’ve never even been late with a payment. Yet in the last 27 months, all but two employees made me feel like a deadbeat who doesn’t want to pay his bills. What company, other than a massive monopoly, would treat any long-term, valued customer this way?