State regulators have fined Versant Power $90,000 for failing to meet customer service standards last year.
The Public Utilities Commission said the power company did not meet targets for answering calls within 30 seconds.
Commissioners denied Versant’s bid to exclude several days of poor performance following a powerful storm in December 2023 from its overall service quality record. The company said it had 97,000 customers without power and its call volume was five times higher than other times in the year.
But Commission Chair Phil Bartlett said that even if that time period was exempted, it would not change Versant’s inability to meet service quality standards.
“Versant was not meeting the metric during normal periods of operation, setting itself up for failure in December,” Bartlett said.
“Performance metrics are designed to incentivize improved and consistent performance and in my view a waiver in this case would undermine that objective,” he added.
This is the latest penalty recently assessed against Versant for missing its customer service targets.
The company incurred a $900,000 penalty in 2022 and another $300,000 the year before, according to commission spokesperson Susan Faloon. The company also had a $570,000 repayment due to customers for 2022 after discovering an error in the customer counts it used to determine service quality metrics, Faloon said.
Versant’s service quality requirements were laid out as stipulations when the commission approved its merger with Enmax and its rates in 2023.
In a statement, Versant said it was on track to meet its 2023 calls answered metrics until the historic December storm.
“Versant Power will continue to seek an appropriate balance between providing high-quality service and keeping rates affordable for customers,” spokesperson Judy Long said.
“In the current economic environment, Versant is not sure customers want to incur additional costs to ensure that Versant Power is able to answer 80 percent of calls within 30 seconds regardless of the impact of major historic storms,” Long added.
This article appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.
