Portland General Electric

Very frustrating experience! The customer service is NOT helpful. For some strange reason PGE thinks my account is closed and I had 2 payments returned. I had paid the returned fee of $ 25 twice. My account is NOT closed and I am paying on time. I want to correct this, but my access to online account is blocked for a year. Called CS twice and they are not willing even to tell me what acct # they have in their records. So how am I suppose to fix this? Sounds like a dead end situation with PGE, who would not listen and just correct that acct #, which I am happy to provide once again.

Awful customer service. Not willing to work with you. Not willing to rectify mistakes they make that cost you $$$.

In all the places I have ever lived, I have never experienced as many power outages as I have in Portland. What gives? Lack of spending on infrastructure? We certainly pay high enough rates.,

Worst of the worst.
Power was shut off today, even though the payment was made before the guy threw the switch (I wasn’t home, but my roommate told me he was there). He announced his presence by hammering on the door and ringing the bell rapidly. When my roommate, who is disabled, opened the door, his first words were «I need a payment.» No introduction or identification, just demanding money. Wouldn’t tell her how much it was for. When she finally got the total, she took 15 seconds to call me. Less than a minute later, I was on the phone with customer (dis)service with a confirmation number. During the call, my roommate texted me to tell me the power was off. Let the agent I was talking to know about this, and next thing I know, I’m getting hit with a $ 30 reconnect fee and $ 300 deposit.
I asked for a supervisor (mostly to file a complaint about the field agent’s behavior), and spoke with Aaron. He continually talked in circles to get me to drop the complaint and wouldn’t explain why the guy wouldn’t wait 30 seconds for a payment confirmation. The reason given was simply «because we have a right to». He lied, saying that I had been called numerous times (no call records from pge in the last 2 months), and that power would be back on by 7 (happened at almost 8). I asked for his supervisor, and had to accept a callback. I’m willing to bet this was a lie too.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time I’ve had this level of service from them. This is what I’ve been getting from them all of my adult life. Read their entries on the BBB site, and you’ll see I’m not alone. Even the resolved cases show that the customer gets screwed over every time, and it’s always the customer’s fault. If they didn’t have a monopoly, I’d use their competitors in a heartbeat.
If there was an option to give less than one star, I probably would, because of their astronomical prices and abysmal customer service, but I guess they deserve that one star for their decent reliability.

Any third world utility company can deliver the power when the sun is shining, however in a power outage situation,” third world service” is what you get with PGE.
The web sight is almost worthless for reporting an outage. Enter your service phone number and up comes a totally wrong corresponding address. Then «waiting on the line» 18 minuets for a representative proved to be equally worthless,… «they» don’t have a clue; no idea, whats the status might be for any service. They have a script, they stick to it. you will get NOTHING from these people. Meanwhile, the «service crew» (aka three guys in a pick-​up truck) are out there heroically” tending” to the needs of the customers. Even the Comcast crew put the PGE bunch to shame…
I’ve never been a fan of government take overs of any business, but in PGE’s case I would definitely make an exception. Rate payers deserve and PAY for much better outage response than the third world service currently being poorly served by PGE.

I moved out of a condo in the ARDEA and shut my service off online. I continued to get a bill for 2 months of service and when I called PGE I got a condescending representative on the other line. She basically told me that I was lying and had to pay or they would send it to collections. I am a professional and have never been talked to like this. I would take my business elsewhere…

*sigh*
So. Many. Issues.
Emergency in apartment (ie. fire/​flood) = power shut off manually. Not staying in apartment.
PGE registers that as disconnect in service. Disrupts my whole life. Power shut off again. Now I’ve just paid $ 500 (normal monthly bill WHEN I’M ACTUALLY LIVING HERE is ~$ 56) for buddha-​knows-​what and although I’m on auto-​pay, I receive a 5-​day shut off notice scheduled for the 2^nd when my auto-​pay on my account is scheduled for the 7^th. Won’t let me pay my bill online since I was already auto-​pay. First person I spoke with didn’t understand my dilemma. Mind you, I just paid $ 240 on Jan. 9^th because of my fun time the month prior.
We won’t even go into how difficult it was to shut off power in my last apartment and turn on power in this apartment last May. A simple transfer of service.
Apparently, despite the fact that there were tenants in my unit before me, since it’s only ~2 years old, my address wouldn’t register. I’m wondering how the previous tenants had power here.
Despite confirmation that my power was taken out of my name at my old apartment, I was receiving and paying THEIR bill with my new address on it.
* head explodes *
But…you don’t sit on hold for 5 years. That’s the 2^nd star.
And most of the people I’ve spoken with are super nice.

I’ve lived in this house in Southeast for almost five years and tonight was the first time that the power had gone out for more than two minutes (while I’ve been home, at least). That’s worth a bunch of starts in and of itself.
However, tonight the power went out on our block around 10:30. Lights were clearly on at the intersection to the south, further down the the street to the north, and on the adjacent east/​west blocks. It was just our block. After conferring with the neighbors, who said that they had called the automated PGE helpline, I decided to give it a whirl as well.
I called and, without even entering any personal information, the automated message asked if the outage I was reporting was at [insert our house number here] (they don’t give a street name for security reasons). When I pressed 1 to confirm, the message told me: four people had reported this issue, 48 customers were affected, a repair crew had been dispatched, and the estimated power restoration was two hours from now. This was far more informative than I was expecting from an automated message.
My wife and I decided to take a stroll around the neighborhood to get some fresh air and enjoy the light in the rest of the ‘hood. When we returned to our block 25 minutes later, a repair truck was in the street. The power was on by the time we reached our front door (1.5 hours ahead of schedule).
That’s excellent responsiveness in my book. Bravo, PGE!

PGE has always returned power to our house in Salem within 30min-​1hours of an outage… and they always are quick and polite when dealing with.

I’ve never reviewed a utility company before. I usually just don’t feel strong enough either way.
I don’t even have these guys yet, and already they have blown my socks off.
A true class-​act. I just set up service for a house I’m going to be renting and I’ve never had a more pleasant experience on the phone:
— After 3 button presses, I went STRAIGHT to an operator.
— She was AMAZINGLY courteous.
— There were no goofy deposits/​credit checks/​validations that many power companies bug you about.
and…here’s the kicker…
She asked me if I wanted to be transferred to any local telephone/​internet services! WOW! What freakin’ service, this benefits them in no way whatsoever… I was amazed. Nice job, PGE, I look forward to our future relationship together *insert heart emoticon here*

I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to review PGE. I thought about it all week. Thanks Cindy for putting it up here.
During the «Artic Blast 2008», we lost power a total of 5 times. Luckily my home is very prepared for this, so it’s only an inconvenience, not a tragedy. Each time the power went out, we’d call the Hotline at PGE. Upon hearing how many thousands were currently without power, I wasn’t going to hold my breath for it to be restored clear out here in BFE. (outside Oregon City) But to my surprise, the first 4 power outages only lasted 3 – 4 hours each time. I was amazed. Then we got hit with a 36 hour outage, but by some miracle, it was restored Christmas Eve at 7pm and stayed on. This made for a very joyous Christmas and a dinner with all of the trimmings (otherwise we were just going to have smoked turkey and dinner rolls)
KUDOS to all of those wonderful technicians who were working around the clock to restore power to so many homes. I’m sure it must have been very hard being away from your own families during that time. Thank you to the California crews that came up to Oregon to help out. Thank you to the friendly customer service rep who spoke to me LIVE on the phone to assure me that we were still listed on the repair order. Very impressive PGE. This will be one bill that I won’t cringe at paying this month. I’ll send it to you with a smile. Watch out next month though… I have a short memory. :)

PGE is pretty cool, as far as power companies go. It’s not just that our electricity came back on in only a couple of hours during the storm last week. It’s not only that I’ve never had a problem or needed to contact customer service about our bill. The user-​friendly website and informational, energy-​saving mailers are also valuable.
For me, here’s the real kicker: I like having the option of demanding 100% wind power, even if it costs me a little more money. None of our stateside friends who live outside of Oregon have this option. They have coal power and that’s that. And despite the controversy over those damned dams, I like donating $ 2 each month to salmon habitat restoration. It’s not just that PGE acts like they give a shit, it’s progressive options like these that will set precedent and create the demand necessary to change energy policy in this country.
Power to the People, yo!

Thank you, PGE for getting our power back on lickity split so we could all have Christmas Eve dinner with our family. I hope all of you can get home to yours.