- Thread starter Cdn_Gringo
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EDENorte North Coast: Electricity Outages & Restoration Announcements
Yeah, because EDENORTE is trying to screw with everyone right??
I mean come on, yes they are clearly a VERY flawed organization, with a lot of issues, but why could that be?
Could it be because the previous administration (as it turned out) was VERY corrupt.
One of the great "wisdom" my grandpa told me, "90% of life is maintenance".
So just think about it, the previous administration instead of using the money for needed maintenance and upgrading the power grid and their whole system, rather they neglected it, just did the absolute least, and the rest of the money went into the pockets of politicians and other "powerful" people.
After decades of that, what do you think is the result?
So it's quite reasonable to understand that repairing/maintaining the neglected power grid, it takes a lot of time. Apart from the fact that during the last 10-20 years the number of people living in the DR and also the amount of electricity needed has increased significantly.
So what's the result? A lot of electrical issues for the common citizen.
I'm not writing this to justify anything, it's very annoying, but it's not a freaking conspiracy theory that EDENORTE or the government is "creating" these outages, it's just a result because of previous neglect.
Unless you pay a monthly fee, if there's no electricity, you won't pay anything (except the monthly minimum of what. 30 pesos?). So they are just as dependent on the power grid working as we are. I call BS on those so-called reports that a great number of people are getting invoiced for electricity that they've not used. It's never happened to me or anyone who I know unless it's been a mistake from someone else. For example, when a friend just had moved here like 6 years ago, he used multiple ACs, computers, etc, and only got charged like 300-400 pesos. But that was because when the owner of the apartment complex had given the counter number to my friend to report to Edenorte, it was not his, but his neighbor that wasn't currently in the country at that moment. So essentially not Edenortes fault.
Incompetence. Edenorte reps have lied to me many times when I call about power outages. Not a conspiracy, they just lie. Very simple.
When I moved to the DR in 2003, power was on for 8 hours a day. So, it was not just the previous guy, it was the guy before him and they guy before him... The mistake was to create a government run power distribution company that allowed people to steal power for years and years. The DR is still climbing out of that hole and now we have inflation, etc..
I agree in general with the above comments. The mistake was having a government run power company to begin with (and a government owned water company which is equally incompetent and getting worse rather than better). There are no conspiracy theories here, the government just sucked and continues to suck at running utilities.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the electric utilities companies and CAASD publish updates and improvement projects on a daily basis on their social media sites - something that was never done before.
Same goes for MOPC as well. Daily reports of the areas that are being addressed and streets being paved - I've never seen that before either. Repairing roads used to be something that was done a month before an election. Not any more; it's an every day occurrence.
It's easy to see how one would think they're not doing anything if one is not informed on what they are doing.
Same goes for MOPC as well. Daily reports of the areas that are being addressed and streets being paved - I've never seen that before either. Repairing roads used to be something that was done a month before an election. Not any more; it's an every day occurrence.
It's easy to see how one would think they're not doing anything if one is not informed on what they are doing.
I will tell you how corrupt (or just incompetent they are).
I have signed up for e-mail bills, but I never got them after about the first 6 months. They told me their system has problems always sending e-mail bills, yet Corraplata manages to do it monthly (not that I am praising there water service)
But two months ago I went in on the 15th of the month because I know my bills are due near there.
I provided the girl my contract numbers as usual from a photo on my phone.
She totaled them up, I paid and left,
A month later they showed up to disconnect one of the services. I showed the disconnect technician the receipts and the stapled facturas and he noticed one of the contract numbers was off by one number off.
So I said no problem I will go in today and he saw I had attempted to pay as I have done for 4 years, they just credited the wrong contract.
At EdeNorte they said yes, it was their error and they credited 1530 pesos to someone in Puerto Plata but there was nothing they could do ...unless that fine gentlemen came forward to say he received credit he should not have . What? They make the error and the customer just has to eat the $30 dollars -Yeah fine organization. And I am 100% certain anyone who lives here long enough will have a similar story about billing errors
I have one similar billing error story. But:
That's nothing. Edenorte tried on two separate occasions to extort over 100,000 USD from our community to "upgrade us" to 24/7 power. They said our power poles were too old to handle 24/7 power. I laughed. I told them fine, just leave the power on all the time and that should work, no? Nobody was going to pay them money to do the job they should do to provide the proper service. After years of waiting and the replacement of the corrupt managers I personally spoke to, Edenorte finally did replace the power poles and supply us with the Dominican version of 24/7 power.
The current blackouts are the result of extremely bad planning by the government, but the middle of June might show improvement.
Thankfully, nothing like this yet, but: I pay the Edenorte bill as Asociacion Popular. I have many of their OWN receipts stapled together and I just hand it to them. A couple months back, their OWN rep could not figure out their OWN receipt as to where is the contract number. I pointed it out 3 times before they grasped it... I understand if it was from another business but they had their own receipt in their hands and could not read it... I always verify that the contract number is correct on the receipt, for billing issues sake.
Yeah, but that could well be true. I work for an online company and we have issues with sending out emails to all of our customers, just because they many times get either blocked by our email servers, the client's email servers, or just sent to the spam/junk folder instead of inbox. Because that also happened to me, but being a tech-savvy person and by having lived here for 10 years, understanding that not even "big" companies have that much tech knowledge, I don't expect much. I also signed up for their e-mail bills when I signed my current contract, and I've not received a single one for the past year or so. But I have access to their e-system and that has worked great so far. I pay directly online and can see my payment history and everything.
Okay, but do you have YOUR name on the contract number? Because the "chica" behind the Edenorte counter should always confirm with the name on the contract before paying. So if it says "chico bill" on the contract and then the "chica" told you that the name on the contract you were about to pay was "Jorge Gonzalez", then why did you not object?
Well, it has never happened to me, mainly because when I first came here I already realized that, if mistakes could be made in a "1st world country", then why wouldn't they happen here as well? Especially taken into consideration that in a "1st world country" you as a customer could get file a complaint and get reimbursed, but here?? haha, Never.
So from day 1, I've always been very meticulous, knowing, not only what is said on a piece of paper, but verifying even where my electrical meter is located and its number and verifying that it's ONLY my house/apartment that is connected to it (as it's common for neighbours and such) to be connected to the same meter and then you paying for someone else's electricity.
Since I pay two bills at one time I pay them combined with a credit card. She stapled the one with the correct name and contract on top and the receipt and I did not flip to check the one I paid for some other person, because the total was in the normal range of what I pay monthly (my error)
Now I am checking each time both facturas. They never issues refunds in this country nor honor warranties -
It's a 'Grab and Go' society.
Well, for this outage they had actually notified on social media yesterday that parts of Puerto Plata, Sosúa Cabarete would have a planned outage today.
Planned outages are published on the website. You can also see the status of your circuit with the oficina virtual site. Many times it gives a reason and an estimated time to fix. And, many times it doesn't.
I have never once seen an estimated time to fix. Not once has a representative given me an estimated time other than later today.
Maintenance, like yesterday's outage for me, was not on any lists, was the reason I got. Probably just based upon the problems in the new power plants.
I don't care if you never saw it. I just stated they provide that info on oficina virtual. Now if you're saying they don't, that's on you.
I don't care if you saw it. So there!
Actually, it's on the fools the run the EDE's .
Where there is an outage, that status box presents a few fields: Outage flag, and estimated time to fix. As I said in my original post, many times they provide the data, many times they leave it blank. That's all. I actually find it helpful and may other board members and visitors to this site may also find it useful.I don't care if you saw it. So there!
Actually, it's on the fools the run the EDE's .
