Customers continue to express frustration with Central Hudson over their current billing system setup and await their claims to be resolved.

Central Hudson customer Genie Abrams of the City of Newburgh said she has been frustrated with the customer service department of the company and the status of her bills.

“I’ve been trying, my husband has been trying to reach them [Central Hudson] for months now and we can’t get hold of anybody there,” Abrams said.

According to Abrams, she has been a Central Hudson customer since 2000 and she said her and her husband’s bills had not been sent out starting back in September.
Recently, Abrams’ December bill listed that the couple needed to pay $838.99 and Abrams wanted to verify the amount owed with the company.

Abrams said she wants the lack of communication between Central Hudson and their customers to be resolved.
“It’s more of a communication problem in my opinion,” Abrams said. “If they [Central Hudson] had only gotten in touch with us and said hey here’s what happened.”

Joe Jenkins, Associate Director of Media Relations for Central Hudson, said the utility was transitioning to a new software system and difficulties with the billing system stemmed from certain Central Hudson customers who were enrolled in “energy choice options.”

These options, according to Jenkins, led to complexities in the system. Some of those options were either rooftop solar or community solar options.

“We had approximately 11,000 customers that were impacted by that particular issue [energy choice options],” Jenkins said. “Since then we’ve made a lot of progress, we’re down to about 2,400 customers that are still being impacted by that issue.”

Yet as the issues are being resolved, Jenkins said other issues are arising that are smaller and isolated. One issue that Central Hudson is focusing on at the moment is ‘community distributed generation’ which Jenkins said is customers subscribing to solar farms, which are large scale areas with solar panels that harvest solar energy.
Jenkins said that Central Hudson has made progress in their efforts to resolve these issues but there is still more work to be done.

Last year, Central Hudson was previously reported to have sent out bills that saw customers being overcharged, underbilled or the regularly scheduled bills had not been received yet.

Concerning customers whose bills may be excessive, Jenkins said Central Hudson is aware of those specific situations.

“We are not terminating service, we are not charging service fees, we’re not charging late fees and we’re allowing them [Central Hudson customers] to enroll in no cost payment plans that will allow them to pay back that balance at their own pace,” Jenkins said. “Overcharges are being refunded and reimbursed steadily.”

Paula Frissora of Montgomery has been a Central Hudson customer since 1993. That same year, she owned her first home and became a landlord as well.

As a landlord, Frissora is enrolled in an automatic rollover program. This means when a tenant moves out, the control of the account goes to Frissora. When a new tenant moves in, the account is then transferred back into the name of the new tenant.

Frissora said she had experienced great customer service in the past from Central Hudson until recently. Frissora said a recent final bill received for $1,265.38 for an apartment that remained empty for 34 days was not acceptable to her. “I called multiple times,” Frissora said. “I’ve never had a problem in the past.”

She has been calling Central Hudson to resolve this billing problem and asks for actual utility usage data during the 34 day time period in question.

“They [Central Hudson] were not able to validate that there was any actual meter reading done at the point of entry the first day [Dec. 11, 2021] that the service was connected into my name and knowing with hard data what the meter readings were to the point that I actually had it transferred over to the other tenant.”

Jenkins stated that Central Hudson has been working with landlord customers of Central Hudson who may also have been dealing with difficulties through the billing system.

“If a landlord is the account holder that has been impacted by some of the billing discrepancies with this system change, we’re of course working with them in the same way that we would work with a homeowner,” Jenkins said.