Tom Loski, vice-president customer service FortisBC says “The BCUC approved a residential conservation rate that would result in 75 per cent of customers seeing lower annual bills and only five per cent of customers seeing an annual increase of more than 10 per cent due to the new rate.”
75% will have lower bills? Really? “any increase can be a hardship for some customers and encourages those customers to get in touch with us directly to see if we can help.” What are they going to do to help us? Are they going to put us on a payment plan? Tell us to retrofit our homes – can you afford this? Tell us to move into a smaller home? (as has been told to one person I have spoken with). Honestly, how will they help us?
As many of your readers know, there are petitions floating around the South Okanagan regarding the Two-tier system and rate hikes that FortisBC and the BCUC has forced upon us, causing extreme financial hardship for many.
Thinking about the totally incomprehensible hikes that have happened, especially in the months of December and January, I was wondering if some of your readers might be willing to e-mail a note about how these increases impacted them. This would be added to our petitions – with first names and city/towns printed only for confidentiality – to, hopefully, drive the point home to FortisBC, the Premier of BC, the BCUC.
We need your stories – the facts…
◾Are you a pensioner, single income family, low-income? ◾Do you live in a rural area without gas option (owned by FortisBC anyway)? ◾Are you unable to burn wood as alternative heat source due to age, health or simply not available? ◾What kind of home do you have? Geo-thermal with all the latest energy appliances? Mobile home? Apartment? Regular home? ◾Can you afford to retrofit your home to make it energy efficient – without putting everything on credit or taking a loan? ◾What was your previous bill before being totally “shocked”, how does it compare to the previous year of the same time? ◾How did FortisBC Customer Service respond to you (I’ve heard people being told to move to a smaller home!!! Seriously???) ◾Did you need to dip into savings, forgo buying groceries or medicine, borrow from family, sell something – just to pay the bill? ◾Did you shut down everything that used electricity. ◾Were you away for some of the time frame that you were severely impacted? ◾Do you have outbuilding for feed, equipment, poultry and livestock that must be heated all year? ◾Do you have space heaters running just to keep water lines from freezing?
We had a mild winter in the South Okanagan relatively speaking. The auto-response from Customer service seems to be, “Well it was winter – it was cold.” Uhhhhmmm, I don’t think so. The spikes in electrical bills for the months of December and January make absolutely no sense. This needs to be investigated deeper.
The government needs to get a handle on the BCUC which is “The British Columbia Utilities Commission is an independent regulatory agency of the Provincial Government that operates under and administers the Utilities Commission Act. The Commission’s primary responsibility is the regulation of British Columbia’s natural gas and electricity utilities. We also regulate intra-provincial pipelines and universal compulsory automobile insurance.” (Taken from http://www.bcuc.com/Default.aspx web site).
If you are interested in sharing your stories with FortisBC, the Premier of BC, the BCUC please send them to tinkerchance@skysurfer.ca .
Kelly Wheeler