Andrew sent a message to Benjamin G.S. Fowke III – Chairman of the Board, President and CEO of Xcel Energy Inc. – Email Address that said:
Dear Sir,
With all due respect, I have become increasingly frustrated with the responsiveness and Customer care of the Alamosa, Colo Xcel Energy office.
There are several layers to this formal complaint.
I contacted Darrell Lewis on 4/19/2016 regarding the possibility of obtaining new gas service to my commercial produce greenhouse which is approx. 2.5miles beyond where the gas line currently ends. (and which currently requires 1.5 BILLION BTU's annually and expansion plans are being made which will potentially double the usage) Darrell asked a few questions about my needs and the next day emailed me a service application. In our telephone conversation he had instructed me to leave blank the section about line size and that he would fill it out. I filled out and returned the application. At that point, Darrell became extremely difficult to contact but when I was able to get an email response from him, all he could tell me was that the application had not been processed by the BCL yet. Then on 6/8/2016, after being completely unable to get a further update, I contacted the BCL myself. I learned that my application had been laid aside because Darrell had NOT filled out the line size information as he had promised. The application was entered that day (7 weeks late).
I honestly believe that I never would have heard from any Xcel employee again had I not followed up repeatedly. I never did talk to Darrell again, apparently he is much too important to return calls. I was finally put in touch with Nathan Ruybal and he promised he would follow my application all the way through until he could provide an estimate. Did he ever call me back? No! Did I call him? Yes! multiple times. Finally on 7/15/2016 I called again to check status and it was obvious that Nathan had completely forgotten about my application and his promised estimate. He couldn't even recall talking to me until I jogged his memory on a couple of the points we had discussed! He promised to call me back in 20 minutes...never happened. I called him after 2 hours... and he informed me that the project was going to cost somewhere around $250K and $260K and that I probably wouldn't want to spend that much and that even if I could get one of the businesses along the route to go in with me it would still be too much for me to spend... AND THEN HE HUNG UP ON ME.
So I'm sure you can understand my frustration up to this point. Let me highlight out a few points... First, is it really that difficult to keep a potential customer informed and be reachable by phone or email? Secondly, when I am told that I will be contacted, that is generally what I expect. Third, How does Nathan Ruybal know how much I am or am not willing or able to spend on this? Lastly, I think you will agree that hanging up on a potential customer is not good business. I tried multiple times to call Nathan again but he was not answering, leaving me to assume that I was being ignored.
The second layer to this formal complaint is in relation to project costs and charges...
I grow Produce year-round in an extremely cold climate. This requires a huge amount of energy, at least by my standards. I am currently using approx 1.5 Billion BTU's annually and I have plans to double my production space within the next year with potential for more in the future. This is potentially over 3 billion BTU's annually. I could be wrong but it seems to me that this is fairly significant usage. Additionally, there are multiple businesses along the proposed route that have expressed interest to me in converting to natural gas were it an option. All of this causes me to wonder how it could not be a possibility to have the job cost cut significantly with Xcel Energy absorbing the majority of it with the knowledge of having those monthly checks for years to come...
I submit this letter with all due respect to all persons involved and hope that this type of feedback can help make your company stronger. I hope to receive a response from you or your delegate and some solutions can be discussed.
I will also be contacting the Public Utilities Commission with these details.
Respectfully,
Andrew
