Oklahoma Gas and Electric — a monopoly utility selling electricity to most of the State of Oklahoma. That word “gas” refers to their being the single greatest consumer of natural gas in this state, which happens to produce a whole lot of it. OG&E would love if it we all would stop using gas for our heating and stoves, so they could corner the market on all natural gas sold in this state. However, most Okies know it would cost more and be less efficient — given the horrific loss of power between generators and the consumer — to let them suck up the natural gas they use. I haven’t seen any calculations recently, but switching to gas from electricity cuts the expense roughly in half for most consumers.
OG&E are not nice people. Sure, most of their workers out on the job are decent, but their office staff are obnoxious at the best of times. Lately, I suppose the economic situation is cutting into their party budget, so they have been in a consistently foul mood. Today, one of their phone clerks called my daughter-in-law the “b-word” when she dared suggest there was an error on the bill. The clerk yelled and threatened to issue a cut-off order for disputing a charge. You see, OG&E made a very common human error, but then decided to charge my son and his wife for their own error.
I’ve sent a complaint to our state regulatory agency, but with all the stories of corruption from the past few decades, I doubt any good will come from it. OG&E has been frequently connected with the word “bribery” in news coming out of the state capitol. I had already tried reasoning with OG&E via email, using my best self-deprecating humor, but you can guess they don’t have a sense of humor and refused to take any action.
So I’m left with this impotent blog post. But of course, there’s always this one small chance someone who reads this will think twice before trusting the biggest monopoly in the state.
Try making an averaged payment a week late, and find out that your averaging agreement is discontinued. Especially hard when the current bill is “above” average (like during the summer).
Then there is the 3 weeks you are out of power from an ice storm, and you have to call 4 time for them to realize, you don’t have power.
Overall, complete dissatisfied, but with no choice, humbled.
I don’t have permission to use his name, but a friend of mine sold real estate in several states. Here in Oklahoma, he rose to the level of a state instructor for real estate, appraisals, assessment and brokerage. He tole me several stories which would make your hair stand on end, all pointing out the lack of customer service, and sometimes downright nastiness of OG&E. They would make him wait days at their leisure before bothering to even put a piece of property in the queue for processing to receive service. In the end, OG&E probably cost him 25% of his profits. No other element of his business was half so challenging. I seem to recall him saying if he hadn’t had problems with OG&E, he wouldn’t have had any problems to worth discussing.