Mckenzie

The Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) says as of January 2009, no customer will be billed for a period in excess of 31 days.

In the last two weeks, the utility company has came under pressure from customers and the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) after it breached the conditions of the All-Island Electricity Licence 2001 by issuing bills for a 41-day cycle.

The normal billing cycle is for 30-35 days.

Hundreds of customers also took to the streets in protest against the exorbi-tant bills. At least one Trelawny residential cus-tomer received a bill for $79,000.

Apology

Addressing members of the Rotary Club of Kingston at the Jamaica Pegasus hotel in New Kingston yesterday, Garth McKenzie, metro region customer operations director at JPS, apologised to customers for the error.

"Mea culpa, mea culpa, lo siento," he said to loud applause. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I was wrong."

He said one of the first things the company has decided to do in order to make amends for its blunder is to standardise and adjust the billing cycle.

"No customer will ever have a bill greater than 31 days, whether it's actual reading or an estimated bill," said McKenzie.

Margin of error

He added that the company has also extended its office hours so that customers can speak with customer representatives about their bills.

"We will also be ad-justing those bills to reflect a 30-day period," he added.

The customer operations director further said that currently, the company's meter-reading process carries an error margin of two per cent.

"JPS tenders on an annual basis seven million invoices. You are talking about 28 million readings that our meter readers have to take manually and put in a computer," said McKenzie, adding that in any system, with such an intense human interface, a two per cent error rate is understandable.