MANITOULIN—The news is good for the Manitoulin Island Community Abattoir, as far as concerns raised recently that high Ontario Hydro One rates were placing a severe financial burden on the company.
At a December 12 public meeting on Manitoulin with Hydro One Ombudsman Fiona Crean and Hydro One vice-president Ferio Pugliese, Jeff Hietkamp of the Manitoulin Abattoir, a non-profit, noted that the company was being driven into the ground by high rates. Missing a $1,300 payment by five days, the abattoir, he said, was now being expected to pay a deposit of $2,700. “How are we supposed to do that if we are having trouble paying $1,300?”
However, on Monday Mr. Hietkamp provided some good news. “I got a call from the Hydro One Ombudsman’s office after raising the complaint at the public meeting and we were told that they have waived the deposit requirement,” he told the Recorder. “I raised a concern that we had been late by five days in making the payment and then we had to make this plus the deposit on top of that.”
“They looked into all of it and waived the deposit fee,” stated Mr. Hietkamp. “It was a $2,700 deposit fee, so the decision was good news for us. It seems from the Ombudsman office response that they are going to try and help out in cases like this.”
Mr. Hietkamp did say, however, “we need more volume of animals and livestock coming through the abattoir; that would help to spread out the cost of hydro. There isn’t much difference in the cost of hydro whether we have one or 10 animals going through the abattoir. The same amount of power is needed regardless of how many animals the abattoir has, but we need to increase the volume, It’s difficult the way things are right now.”
In another decision made by Hydro One, the company announced on December 21 that a new paperless billing and usage alert notification service is now available to its customers. Residential and small business customers can now sign up for easy-to-access paperless bills and helpful usage alerts and other reminders. By introducing this customer service enhancement, the company expects to reduce operational costs and at the same time provide the near-real-time account information customers have been asking for.
“Our customers want valuable, easy-to-use tools they can access where and when they want and that’s what we’re providing them through our new paperless billing and notification services,” said Ferio Pugliese, executive vice-president, customer care and corporate affairs, Hydro One. “This is one of many service enhancements we plan to launch as we work towards finding better ways to meet customer needs by providing personalized choices for how they receive information about their electricity accounts and usage.”
