WESTWOOD – The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is now opening some of its customer service centers on Saturdays, which started on March 22.
In response to the continuing issues of the LADWP’s new billing system, four of these customer service centers will be open on Saturdays for the next eight weeks with business hours that go from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., according to a bulletin from the LADWP. Among these locations is the West Los Angeles service center on 1394 S. Sepulveda Boulevard.
Customers can expect the usual services to be administered at these sites, including payments, processing service requests and resolving billing issues.
To further create an air of transparency, the DWP created a “Customer Service Dashboard,” which is available on the department’s website. It gives residents a look into the ongoing process of repairing and fine tuning the new billing system, which has among other issues, billed customers erroneously. This report, according to the DWP is similar to the one that is delivered to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti every week that updates him on the status of the billing system, which was meant to replace the previous 40-year-old system.
The report shows various statistics that have been tracked. One of these is the amount of customer calls placed to the DWP, which has averaged between 15,000 and 16,000 calls for the first two weeks of March. In the same timeline, live call wait times have lasted about 27 to 34 minutes, a far cry from the goal of three minutes the department has set.
The report also shows that almost 90 percent of bills have been charged in excess, which the report has deemed “unacceptable.” Even with the estimated billing too high, a problem that has remained since November 2013, the report cites a few achievements made during that time, including new meter readers being actively hired and trained and emergency customer service representatives finishing their own training. The report also makes a recommendation of permanently hiring and retaining emergency hires as new city personnel.
An apology letter from recently hired DWP General Manager Marcie Edwards, which was revealed on March 3, stressed that despite the persistence of the problems, the department would do everything it could to better their service.
“We’re working to fix it and do it better, we promise to keep you informed, and we appreciate the patience and understanding that has been shown by so many of our valued customers,” Edwards said in the letter.
