Ombudsman André Marin has accused Hydro One of “extortion” for sending out letters this winter threatening to cut off electricity to customers in arrears — even though it’s against company policy.

In his ongoing investigation of the provincial agency’s billing debacle, Marin on Wednesday issued an interim report lambasting Hydro One for trying to “bully” customers into paying their bills — many of which had them owing thousands of dollars when it turned out to be a fraction of that.

“Over the past few months — during one of the coldest winters in memory — Hydro One has been threatening to cut off people’s power for unpaid bills,” he told a news conference at Queen’s Park.

Marin said when pressed, Hydro One officials described it as an idle threat, but he said what it amounts to is “extortion.” Hydro One has a policy against cutting off customers’ power in winter.

“One father of a newborn and a 6-1/2-year-old near London, called us in a panic because Hydro One sent him a disconnection notice on Valentine’s Day — remember how cold it was then. They demanded that he pay his $3,200 bill right away. We received almost 100 complaints this winter from people in similar situations,” he said.

For more than a year Marin’s office has been investigating in excess of 10,000 complaints about Hydro One’s billing practices and customer relations.

“Some of them are frankly shocking. We’ve seen absurdly high bills and atrocious customer service. We’ve seen astounding errors over and over again — people charged $10,000, even $20,000 at a time, when what they really owe is closer to $100,” he said.

Marin said the “tactics” Hydro One is using with its customers clearly illustrated it has forgotten that it is a public servant.

He explained that even after he warned the brass at the utility to cut it out, Hydro One simply revised the wording in the threatening letters.

“We gave Hydro One a chance to resolve this issue before making it public today . . . that was 19 days ago and the complaints about disconnection threats kept coming in,” he said.

Marin said the Hydro One policy states that electricity service will not be suspended between Nov. 1 and the end of March.

“Some would think that these notices are fear-mongering, they’re bluffing, they are bullying by the state or some kind of extortion. I think these notices are the case of a public servant lying to the public. This is exactly why citizens lose faith in our public institutions,” he said.

Marin suggested to reporters that when his final report on Hydro One, expected in a few months, will not be flattering.

Hydro One issued a statement following Marin’s new conference saying “significant improvements have been made since the implementation of the company’s new customer information system in May 2013” and vowed that customers with incorrect bills will not receive disconnection notices.

“We have come a long way. In the past year we have restored service levels at our call centre and performance of our billing system to levels higher than before the transition to our new billing system two years ago,” said Carm Marcello, president and CEO, Hydro One.

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Opposition critics took a swipe at the Liberal government for not riding herd on the public utility. NDP Leader Andrea Horwath pointed a finger at Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli and called for his resignation.

Chiarelli said he is “very empathetic” to the issues raised by Marin but says he is also satisfied that Hydro One will deal with the matter of these letters quickly.

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