Trying to get answers from Hydro One about its bizarre billing and customer service practices is like “wrestling with a slippery pig," Ontario ombudsman Andre Marin said Tuesday.

So, after receiving hundreds of consumer complaints about the giant, provincially-owned crown corporation, which supplies electricity to 1.4 million customers, he’s launching an investigation into it.

“The stories we are hearing will be familiar to many of you in the media — stories of huge, unexplained ‘catch-up’ bills, multiple bills, or ‘estimated’ bills with no rhyme or reason,” Marin said. “And when customers try to get answers from Hydro One, they are stymied — just as my office has often been stymied when we intervened.”

Things are so bad, Marin said he’d advise people against giving Hydro One permission to withdraw money from their bank accounts to pay for their electricity bills.

That’s because Hydro One has gone into people’s accounts and overbilled them thousands of dollars in error, Marin said.

Then, when customers tried to get their money back, they were told it wasn’t possible because of provincial legislation.

Hydro One insisted it could only give them credit on their future electricity use until the overbilled amount was used up, which Marin described as absurd.

(The government says Hydro One will compensate customers for overbilling, but many of its customers dispute that.)

Given that Marin’s investigation will take nine months, what are Premier Kathleen Wynne and Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli going to do about Hydro One’s incompetent and arrogant billing practices starting now?

The Toronto Sun and other media have been running stories on Hydro One’s faulty practices for years, covering everything from the high-handed way it installs smart meters, to inaccurate billings, to unilaterally cutting people off hydro.

As energy minister, Hydro One is Chiarelli’s responsibility. Remember him? He claimed the Liberals’ canceled gas plants scandal, which the auditor general said will cost up to $1.1 billion, would only hit the average Ontarian for less than the price of a Tim Hortons’ coffee a year.

And that’s the minister who should be taking immediate steps to fix the mess at Hydro One, before Marin exposes how bad things are in nine months.

Don’t hold your breath.