The Importance of Customer Relations

National Grid, my natural gas provider, is a large corporate utility that has a monopoly on Brooklyn. As such, they don't have to give a shit about whether people like dealing with them or how their customer service ranks in comparison to competitors because, in the local market, they have none.

Due to a mistake on my part, as well as the unfortunate coincidence of both the USPS and Capital One Bank sucking at the same time, I have been locked out of both paying my bill online and paying my bill by check via snail mail. I am now forced to either pay by credit card, which comes with a $2.25 transaction fee per bill, money order, which also requires a fee, or pay in person, with cash. I spoke with a customer service representative yesterday who failed to grasp how punishing people so heavily for simple mistakes, some of which aren't even the customer's fault, will just lead to more mistakes as it becomes more and more difficult to pay bills on time. She didn't seem to care much about what I thought. As a result, I decided to send an email to National Grid with my thoughts regarding the matter.

I don't have a question, but rather, a suggestion.

I made a mistake typing in the bank account number when I first set up my online bill payment for my gas bill for National Grid. I now cannot make any payments online. I mailed National Grid a check at the end of February that did not end up making it to National Grid until the beginning of April. Fearing that the check had fallen into the wrong hands or was lost forever, I put a stop payment on the check in March and mailed you another check that was processed a few days later and covered the entire balance on my bill. The initial check with the stop payment order made it to you on April 4th when it was processed. It then took Capitol One, the bank that carries my checking account, 20 days to inform you that the check had been canceled, at which point you placed a ban on receiving any checks from me by mail.

I'm sure someone in your corporation has brought this up, but in case they haven't, I would like to point out how backwards this is in regards to preventing more occurrences of failed or mistaken payments for your customers. Because you have locked out both my online payment option and my ability to mail you a check, it has now become unbelievably difficult for me to pay my bill on time, as I have two roommates to collect payment from and then have to use my lunch break to travel by foot to a payment center. While I accept responsibility for not being more careful in my online payments, there is no actual fault on my part (or yours) for the mishap with mailing the check, except the unfortunate coincidence that both the USPS and Capital One suck.

While I realize you probably don't give a damn whether your customers are happy with you or not because you are a large utility corporation and I have no other option but to do business with you if I want heat, hot water and gas to cook with, but I thought I would take a few minutes out of my time to try and plead my case with whatever shred of human decency you may have left.

I'm tired of dealing with your backwards customer relations policies and plan on doing whatever I can to avoid having to do business with you ever again.

Take care,

Greg