Why I hate Meralco, the ERC and Napocor

Before yesterday’s 24-hour metro-wide blackout and the rotating brownouts that are to follow, I already had plenty of reason to hate the Manila Electric Company, the National Power Corp. and the Energy Regulatory board.

Now I have even more reasons to hate that evil power triumvirate. They are not there to serve us. They are there to beggar us and force us into servitude to them. At least that is how it feels to be in my shoes right now.

Without a refrigerator or air-conditioning, I pay a monthly bill averaging about P5,600. A few years ago, there were power thieves hooked up to my utility line and my bill hit the ceiling at P17,000 or so. When I brought my complaint before the neighborhood Meralco office, doing as the company requested by reporting power theft, I was rudely informed by their “customer service” staff that I had to be the one to remove the jumper connections and prosecute the thieves. With my own money. Because they were only responsible for the meter (for which my family paid a fee to lease).

We had to pool money and borrow some over to pay that bill or lose power in the middle of summer – something that would not be good for my mother who suffers from asthma. But Meralco, the ERC and Napocor don’t really care about individual consumers. They’re too big for that.

My family and I live in an 89-meter apartment in a medium residential district of Makati. Now how on earth would our light bill reach such heights if we were the only ones using the power? We have never had air-conditioners installed in our home, also because were were mindful of power costs. We shut the lights when they are not in use and use only the appliances we need to use at any given time.

My tale is not even the saddest there is to find on the internet. Others have been saddled with P40,000 or P50,000 electricity bills. These people say they had no adequate warning or explanation from Meralco regarding their bills. The only response they got was the unfeeling “pay in full on the due date or we cut your power” that seems to be the stock answer of Meralco to such distress.

When I complained about my May 2010 billing at the Meralco office on Kamagong St. and asked for an explanation of it, the response I got was even more obnoxious: “You used the power. Pay for it. If you cannot afford the bill, don’t use the electricity.” The tone was snooty and the customer service rep stank of cheap cologne.

So, I should be thankful that my power rate is consistently being jacked up and that they are treating me like a mendicant even as they bleed me dry? On what planet is that seen as acceptable behavior by anyone, let alone a company tasked with providing vital services? I am willing to pay for good service, but, in the part of Makati City where I live, we don’t get good service.

Instead, we get frequent spikes and drops in power – experts call it dirty power, the kind that eventually wrecks your appliances, PCs and other gadgets that require electricity to operate. This dirty power has cost me four very good PCs, nearly fried my fifth computer and my laptop, and caused my ref’s compressor to go rogue and demand more and more power. It also destroyed one washing machine and a microwave. These power fluctuations also killed my TV set. How do I know this? The three electricians I hired to look into the problem told me so.

Initially they said my home’s wiring may be at fault, so I spent P15,000 to have my home rewired. No dice, the flux kept happening. The electricians then said it was already the power supply, for my neighbors were experiencing the same thing. Such a fluctuation caused an electrical fire in a neighbor’s apartment down the hall five years ago, they said.

I know there was a fire. I helped evacuate the unfortunate neighbors who were sleeping when it broke out and I was entering my apartment. The Bureau of Fire Protection said the fire was sparked by a power surge.

My automatic voltage regulators (AVRs) click and their pilot lights flicker when a surge or drop in power happens. These clicks and light flashes make a symphony, particularly on Monday evenings when my work is heaviest, and I sometimes hear a Rachmaninoff chord or two in them.

I have connected all my essential electricals (PCs, sound system) to these AVRs to save them. I’ve been through about six AVRs in the last two years to save me more grief. I’ve switched to CFL bulbs to cut costs further. I unplugged the ref, became a light Nazi, cut down on everything I could. To no avail. Meralco is still sucking me dry.

The ERC is still approving power distribution rate hikes, Congress renews Meralco’s franchise license without any investigations (such juicy, juicy prey, but I guess they are enjoying the lobby perks too much to bother) and the Napocor is still not able to provide steady and reliably clean power on the capital’s grid.

My beef with the ERC is that is continues to let Meralco beg system losses and their need to improve services as a reason for approving rate hikes. It lets Meralco pass off its parking lot, theater and firing range as “power generation facilities” rather than as facilities that consume electricity without producing any power at all.

I could be wrong if Meralco has come up with an uber-secret technology that uses the energy expended by a speeding bullet, parking car or singing diva to generate electricity. I’m not quite convinced that Meralco has managed to do this, however.

Oh, and Meralco also played an ace in its deck after the open power market was established: They bought power from a sister company that is an independent power producer – fine if the prices were the lowest of the lot, but no… They bought power from their affiliate IPP despite the fact that this IPP charged more for the power it supplied to Meralco.

Meralco begged for a price hike and got the go ahead for it from the ERC before summer hit with the full force of the scorching sun because, they said, they were suffering from losses. System losses that they pass on to consumers, by the way (it is in your bill and mine, under “system losses”).

A few weeks later, they convene their annual stockholders’ meeting to announce profits and share them. PROFITS! I call it blood money. The sweat of my brow and blood in my veins is taken by these vampires to feed to their favored few, the stockholders.

Good money that I could be spending on my children’s needs and some of their wants goes instead to fattening the pockets of the people Meralco values more than the consumers who make their profits possible. This enrages me so much I could vomit.

Oh, I may only be one irate consumer, but all one has to do now is to look at Facebook, where there is a dedicated “I hate Meralco” page with thousands of angry Meralco hostages. Now, why would these good people hate the power provider who gives them light? They would (as I do) hate Meralco for not giving a rat’s silent fart about their woes. We feel like we have had thieves unleashed upon us, thieves whose pilferage of our hard-earned money is sanctioned by the state.

Basyang showed us just how bad the power situation in the country really is: We pay some of the highest prices for electricity in the world in exchange for dirty power, poor service, slow response to downtime and poor customer service, not to mention lies put on our billing statements that are disguised as unintelligible fees for this and that expense that Meralco should really shoulder instead of passing on to the consumer.

Meralco makes us, the end users, shoulder the risks that (in my honest opinion) should be theirs as the utility provider. After all, they are the ones who are in business and, if they haven’t the balls to take their risks, then they should not play in the arena.

When Basyang downed power lines, it took between 16-24 hours to restore power to the capital’s commercial and business districts (CBDs) because of the massive power demand in these areas. The Luzon grid was blacked out by downed transmission lines and all Napocor could say was that they were working to restore power – and they were saying this eight to 10 hours after the blackout.

In other countries, such delay in power restoration would have had people picketing agencies like the Napocor and companies like Meralco. Businesses had to shell out additional money to run generators so their business operations could go on, after a fashion. Home users had to swelter through the humidity and hope they had enough candles, cook all their refrigerated food and pray for light soon.

But wait, there’s more! Now there will be rotating brownouts of several hours’ duration over the coming days because, surprise, surprise, the Luzon grid is still not fully repaired and there is still insufficient power to go around. So now our power supply is both inconstant and dirty and we still have to pay for a Meralco price hike. Lovely, just lovely. Only heads on pikes would be lovelier.

Here is the lot of the ordinary folk: We are made to pay through the bloody nose and go without because of one monopoly’s unbroken focus on profit. It sickens me and I pray that this new administration (yes, P. Noy, I mean yours) will work on improving this situation of poor service at exorbitant cost. Otherwise, we would be a very unhappy people indeed.

Alma Anonas-Carpio is currently the Editor-in-Chief of BatulaoView(www.batulaoview.com) real estate and travel magazine. She was Associate Editor of Philippines Graphic (www.philippinesgraphic.com) and I.T. contributor of the BusinessMirror (www.businessmirror.com.ph).

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