PG&E Closing Service Centers?

Here we go again. Another business moving toward that damned "Call 1-800...." thing for service. PG&E wants to close a number of its local service centers. So, if you want to go in and talk to a real person about your bill, good luck, as they're trying to save money by having all their functions carried out by a phone bank in who knows where.

Pisses me off, even though I can count on one finger the times I've used the local service center, and that was just because the PG&E online bill payment function wasn't working for a while.

Truth be told, PG&E already does use the centralized service center system and it seems to work ok. The service centers are just offered as a convenience. Still, you can only hope, assuming the regulators approve this move, that they make it reasonably easy to still talk to a real person if you have a problem. I know some companies make it seem near impossible to contact a real person when the automated menu doesn't satisfy the problem you need to take care of.

It took me forever to straighten out a problem I had with one of my phone lines a couple years ago. SBC's automated problem analyzer kept telling me my phone line was fine. Finally, I snagged one of their linemen who was working a few houses down the street and he checked it out and said I did, indeed, have a problem and it was on their side of the phone line. No thanks to their automated system, problem resolved.

Only time will tell, and despite this being called a cost saving effort, we all know our gas and electric bill won't be getting any lower.