Hydro One is scrambling to make amends with its customers plagued by a billing snafu that has resulted in record complaints about the Crown corporation.

Among other things, the province’s largest electricity distributor with about 1.4 million customers is stepping up plans to introduce a customers’ bill of rights.

“I am begging their indulgence here,” Carmine Marcello, president and chief executive officer of Hydro One, told the Star.

“I just want to acknowledge that we have let our customers down and I just want everyone to known — especially those on fixed incomes . . . that we are going to make it right,” he said.

However, he couldn’t say when the system when the billing problems will be fixed.

Marcello said refunds will be issued where necessary, no customers will be charged interest for mistakes that weren’t theirs and no one’s electricity is being cut off due to billing errors.

Hydro One took a pounding earlier this week from ombudsman André Marin when he launched a nine-month into its much-criticized billing practices, noting that long-suffering Hydro One customers are victims of “egregious errors and baffling bills” inflicted on them by an uncaring Crown corporation.

“My heart goes out to those average citizens that try to take on the Goliath that is Hydro One,” he told a Queen’s Park news conference.

Marin told reporters the stories legion of “huge unexplained catch-up bills, multiple bills or estimated bills with no rhyme or reason. And when customers try to get answers from Hydro One they are stymied just as my office has often been stymied when we intervened.”

Marcello said a new call centre and billing system was the fourth phase of an eight-year project to modernize the corporation’s technology in order to keep pace with expanding customer expectation.

“The first three phases went pretty seamlessly” but then things went awry, he said.

“The level of pain it is causing our customers is greater than we anticipated . . . and we have been working on that tirelessly,” Marcello said, adding that includes better training for staff and clarifying existing corporate policies.

Marcello said he has been working on a customers’ bill of rights — or Customers Service Charter — because “obviously it is needed.”

“I’m not exactly sure what that will look like when it is rolled out . . . it’s obvious that it’s something that we need to speed up and expedite,” he said.

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Marin said Friday that he met with Marcello and that the CEO “pledged Hydro One’s full co-operation with our investigation” as the number of complaints to the ombudsman’s office jumped by 1,500 just since Tuesday -- the most complaints his office has ever received about a provincial body in such a short time.

“The buck does stops with me. I have taken personal ownership of it,” Marcello told the Star.

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