My husband and I returned from a trip the other night only to find that we had no hot water at all in our home. We called our plumber first thing in the morning and he came and advised that both pilot lights were out on our hot water heaters and he had to re-light them. He explained that Centerpoint Energy had an outage while we were gone and literally thousands of pilot lights on hot water heaters in the area went out. I paid $50 for the service call. I then proceeded to call Centerpoint Energy and was left on hold for quite a while after going through about four different menus to find out how to get a real person on the phone. When I finally was able to speak with a representative, I explained our problem and asked whether they would refund our money for the service call. She said she did not know what I was talking about and she knew of no such outage in the Crowley area. I was put on hold for an extended period of time and when she came back on the phone she told me that the outage was not their fault and therefore no refunds would be given.

This representative told me that I should have them (Centerpoint Energy) instead of calling my plumber. After questioning her, she told me that Centerpoint would have charged me $86 if they would come out to light the pilot lights. What? My plumber charged me only $50 which is less than his normal service call and they would have charged me $86. This makes no sense to me. I told the representative that I was going to write a letter to the paper because I thought this was wrong of them to take advantage of their customers. Her response was, “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

We have no choice in gas companies. I feel that our money (along with everyone else’s) should be refunded by Centerpoint. My next letter will be to the Public Service Commission.

Georgette M. Dugas