The new head of the Saudi Electricity Co., Abdul Aziz Al-Saghir, issued a statement that was published in Saudi newspapers saying the company’s doors were open to customer feedback. I hope that this is a sincere gesture, rather than just another piece of propaganda with no connection to reality.
Saghir said that the company works on providing excellent services for clients, improving them and working on greater customer satisfaction.
We subscribers hope to see these promises come true. Electricity is very important and plays a major role in our lives. Since the company has offered more transparency in dealing with problems people face, I offer some suggestions of my own.
First: The way power cuts are reported and addressed needs some serious improvement. We need a better emergency phone line, especially at night when the current phone line always appears to be left unanswered. The company needs to implement a system that responds better to reports of outages. This is vital.
Second: The way the company addresses customers’ complaints regarding their bills needs to be changed. The across-the-board idea of “pay now or face disconnection” is not logical. The company should differentiate between customers that complain about one bill but that have a history of timely payments and those that deserve to be blacklisted for illegitimate non-payment.
Third: There is a big problem in delivering electricity bills to subscribers. The company should invent a new mechanism for secure bill delivery.
Fourth: People are complaining that they’re being over-charged, which exacerbates the second problem described above. Customers that find themselves in this unfortunate situation have no time to formally complain before facing the “pay now or face disconnection” dilemma.
One final issue is that the company needs more employees to address these problems and improve their overall service. Yet we do not see the company looking for new employees. I wonder why.
