Central Maine Power sent a self-promotional flier along with its August electricity bills. In this flier, it pats itself on the back for beating “all of our service quality targets” last year. One of these targets is “Meters read and not estimated,” and CMP awards itself a grade of 100 percent for 2013.
In reality, our meter was read only six out of 12 months; the other six months, it was estimated. We’re guessing ours was not the only meter that is being read only on alternate months.
This is a great inconvenience to us, as it makes it impossible to compare monthly costs year to year. Also, we recall that when the Public Utilities Commission approved the $12 monthly fee that we have to pay for keeping our old, non-smart meter, the fee was explained as a way to let CMP offset the cost of employing meter-readers.
We’d like to know why we are being charged a fee for reading the meter every month, but the meter is being read only every other month. We’d also like to know how CMP can claim to be reading 100 percent of meters, when it clearly is not.
A complaint to CMP resulted in this explanation: “The flier you received is more about the smart meters and how we rarely estimate customers’ bills that have a smart meter.”
Nowhere on the flier does it mention smart meters. We feel CMP is being dishonest in its self-promotion, and we feel we are being forced to pay for a service we are not receiving half the time.
Janet and Donald Wessels
Kennebunk
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