News10NBC Investigates: RG&E brings team directly into communities to handle customer service complaints

ROCHESTER, N.Y. RG&E is bringing its customer service representatives directly into neighborhoods to field complaints and questions from upset customers.

For months, News10NBC has been exposing major billing and customer service issues at the utility and now the utility is working to fix some of those issues.

On Friday, RG&E parked its mobile command center at the David Gantt Community Center in Rochester and staffed it with customer service representatives to deal with questions and complaints from customers in-person. There was a steam of customers to keep them busy.

“It’s no secret that we have had some challenges in the past few months, so we came together across multiple business areas and we decided to do something about it,” says Veronica Dasher, the manager of Government and Community Relations for RG&E. “What we’re hearing from people is they need access to us. They’re having challenges with their bills and they need to talk to somebody so instead of being in our building, we’re coming out into the community.”

Candice Lucas has been struggling to get through to RG&E about issues with her bill.

“I was on a budget and it was a regular flow for like 20 years and then all the sudden, prices skyrocketed and I just had no idea why or how or what was going on,” she explains. “I tried to call but the waits were 40 minutes and then I still didn’t get any … my issue still wasn’t rectified.”

Lucas stopped at the pop-up on Friday to see if she could get some help.

“They were able to pull my bill up and they’re actually going to give me a call back in a couple of days to go through it again,” she said as she exited the mobile trailer.

RG&E is hoping a little face-to-face time with customers will help the utility get back on track too.

“We’re all trying to pitch in and help where we can and make sure that we’re serving the community the way that they expect,” Dasher says.

The utility is looking to work with neighborhood associations, recreation centers and town halls to bring more of these pop-ups across the region.