Enbridge has just updates and installed a new gas meter for my house. They left a notice on my door stating that I have to call them to book an appointment to restart the service and reignite my pilot light. After work, at 4:30, I called them to schedule my 4 hour window. It is now almost 10, and they still haven't arrived. So, I called them to find out what was going on. Apparently, there was an emergency. No one called to inform the customers sitting at home that there was a delay. No gas equals no cooking, and no hot water! I filed a complaint to no avail! So, I sit here and wait until someone comes. Hopefully, it'll be before midnight as suggested by their front of the line customer service reps.

Their customer service offers absolutely no compensation for wasting their customers' time. Since it's night time, there are NO managers available either. So, it's ok to waste my time, but not ok for us to use their time! ENBRIGE does NOT deserve a monopoly on gas! SHAME on them!

How does a company with an F rating from BBB come to monopolize the gas supply market and I would we be able to get out of this tyranny?

We bought a house with an abandoned swimming pool last year. In late July last year, we decided to tear it down and fill it with dirt. The contractor brought a bulldozer in. Because our backyard is lower than front yard and the pathway's width is just enough for him to drive through, he realize that this job is more trouble than he originally thought. This idiot decided after each time he dump the dirt to our back yard, he would scrape the ground with the tip of his bulldozer on his way back to make gradually the slope flatter.

He hit the gas pipe. I call Enbridge. The technician came. The first thing they did is yelling at me for not calling them ahead before I dig. (To paraphrase: "Oh, you are so dead! you didn't call us ahead and we are going to slap you with a big bill!") I am pissed. I only wanted the pool filled, how was I to know the contractor will be digging? How was I to know the idiot would do what he did. He actually went in the ground for about 18 inches and hit the gas pipe.

After they fix the pipe and left, a couple of their subcontracted inspector came and looked. None of them are as rude as the Enbridge technicians. A couple days later, TSSA responded and start investigating this case, even they are friendly and realize this incident is not my fault and didn't give me any trouble. He went ahead and fined our contractor.

We held up the last $500 payment of this job to the contractor because the Enbridge's worker's warning/threat. Months went by, we called Enbridge several times and asked if there will be any additional fine. They never told us there would be any. Even though the contractor broke a few things in our front yard and did a terrible job fixing them, we thought we would still just be the bigger person give him the $500 we have been holding up without putting up any resistance.

FULL 6 MONTHS after the incident, guess what? Enbridge sent me a mail, it says how I am at fault and fined us $665.11 for what happened. It is due NEXT WEEK (Jan 29). The statement is dated Jan, 14 but the postage stamp is Jan 19. (They even kept the letter for 4 days before sending out!!!) I receive the mail on the 21th, which is a Friday night. It only leaves me 5 WORKDAYS to come up with this money. You have to realize this is even more than what we pay in gas for a whole year. There was even a fine print of a bill saying they will send us more bill if other charges comes to their attention.

We called the contractor and see if insurance will cover it. He said he will come over and talk about it. GUESS WHAT? He is not showing up. After all he has got all his money.

Yes, the contractor is an idiot plus bastard. However, what really stunned me is Enbridge - a dirty bureaucratic monopoly. Every person who works at Enbridge seems to have caught the same bug. The are all extremely heartless and arrogant. They seem to sincerely feel it is the right for their organization to blame anyone they like and rob them as they wish. Afterall, they answers to absolutely no one.

Adding onto simliar sentiments, I feel that enbridge is an apathetic despot. My personal experience is as follows. Being an average family living in the suburbs we have many bills to manage. Owning a seperate property (other than the one we reside) there are many bills to oversee. Our property had been vacant for several months, According to enbridge, the bills had not been paid for since the months of August-September. For this reason they decided to shut down the heat for the house. The result of this action has been extremely financially crushing. It had taken until early February to realize the effect of enbridges thoughtless actions. The freezing seasonal temperatures had caused virtually all the water pipes in the house to burst thereby ruining all drywall, ceilings, kitchen, bathrooms, basically gutting out the entire home's interior. This has cost an estimated $50, 000 minimum in repair damage (more than some people's yearly salaries)

Firstly, I'd like to state that yes there is partial liability on the client’s part for not managing their bills, however, a huge monopolistic energy company like enbridge should be EXTREMELY responsible for contacting clients to follow up with these bills. It doesn't take anyone of high caliber to understand that a company like enbridge has ample amounts of resources and at least some sort of customer communications system. Gathering from their policies there is no doubt that enbridge collects individual clientele information at a constant rate. With this said, upon contacting enbridge, their response for not reaching us for unpaid bills was that they "tried to contact us". As proof from the above experience, their attempts were obviously unsuccessful which I find absolutely ridiculous. Such “professional” company should have absolutely no excuse in finding ways to reach paying customers. From a business standpoint it would be absurd to not have a means of collecting money for services delivered, especially a company that heavily deals with HUMAN clientele should have NO EXCUSE and NO REASON for not being able to reach a customer. The only type of people I can think of that falls into an “unreachable” category would be those who are convicts, con artists, or basically anyone TRYING TO EVADE payments. Last time I checked, this DOES NOT include normal people who live in one spot, have daily jobs, and are willing to comply to late payments or otherwise. This may be a reflection of how poor the policies or customer service system is in enbridge (which may bring even LARGER ISSUES concerning a MAIN community energy provider). Situations involving people can not be treated as black or white where NECESSARY services are withheld. Especially with long time clientele and unproblematic clientele with decent histories, this mere fact should speak volumes about the reliability of the customer to the patron.

I would also like to add another important issue in specific to my experience. A LARGE company such as enbridge dealing with specific services such as heat CAN NOT admit to ignorance of the DIRE consequences of WITHHOLDING such a utility to a home. Correct me if I am wrong, but it is not new knowledge to know that there would be extremely high risk of many things such as water pipes in a house to burst/become damaged due to freezing temperatures. Any sensible person can realize that these damages ARE SERIOUS and COSTLY. When selling services advantages and disadvantages are always brought up to either entice a customer or scare a customer into purchasing. Tell me HOW a “specialized” and “professional” company can be so negligent in ignoring the IMPORTANCE of heat to a home?! OR if they know full well the consequences, then how can such a people oriented industry not make sure/ put on the highest priority to reach the customer?!

For those wondering, yes there is contemplation in pursuing the issue further, but currently it is tough to individually manage daily business and pursue this matter at the same time. From my experience I’m not sure how many others have gone through the same thing. Looking for possible suggestions or others put in the similar position so that maybe we can do something so that we and those in the future will not be victimized from the unprofessional and irresponsible monopolistic enbridge (or other like companies).

I was unfairly charged a labor fee of $75 because Enbridge argues that never got a note from my contractor showing repairs concerning a previous tag (boiler malfunction), which was repaired after on-time. Even the same day when my contractor replaced the old boiler unit they discovered a leak from the gas meter and notified Enbridge immediately. I had already notified Enbridge months ago for the same problem but they never called me back or solve this gas leak which they consider an emergency.

Enbridge insisted that never got the documentation from my contractor and had to send an inspector to my place to check that the repairs were done. Surprisingly, no inspector ever knocked our door and got into our basement to check the work. Enbridge may have dispatched an inspector to check the gas-leak from the meter outside the house (which they say they did in the coming days), but the costs of that visit should be at their expense since the leak was in the meter itself. No inspector came to check the work inside my house that originated the original tag instead.

Since the wrong $75 charge, I had called Enbridge several times to request the charge be waived since I have confirmation that my contractor contacted Enbridge to clear the tag given the problems had been corrected. I even called personally Enbridge the day after my contractor did the work to ensure they had received the notification from my contractor and to offer myself to send the proper documentation by fax in addition to my contractor. Enbridge said it was not necessary that I send the same information since they had been in touch with my contractor and would receive the documentation via fax at any moment.

I have spoken with over 5 agents and 3 supervisors from customer service to get my situation corrected and rectified. The first 2 supervisors promised me that they would contact Enbridge operations who issued the charge to determine whether the charge was appropriate or not. After several weeks I was never contacted by these “supervisors / managers” to receive the findings of their investigation. I’ve had to waste my personal time to follow up on this issue and try to reach those supervisors with no success so far.

My experience today is what finally motivated me to write this note since today May 9 at 12:30 pm; I was object of the worst treatment and service by a customer service supervisor from Enbridge, named Steve, who hanged-up the phone on me. I called today to talk to a "supervisor" again to inquire the status of my unsolved complaints from the last 3 months. This employee interrupted me and never let me convey my position clearly. He disputed every sentence I was able to “transmit” and accused myself of interrupting him instead. But worse than his mannerisms was what he said to me: a) Enbridge doesn’t accept any fax confirmation page as valid proof for any purpose; b) the consumer will be never be right given associations such as consumer/business Bureau/Ombudsman from Canada cannot successfully dispute their rulings or decisions; that they are above any organization based on government recognition; c) Enbridge was the sole monopoly supplier in my neighborhood and; d) no matter what I say he wouldn’t not believe in my version.

This shows an abusive and pre-potent company that take advantage of their power over consumers. I live in many countries before and I am astonished how this happened to my in Canada where one of the most remarkable characteristics of Canadians is being polite. I had never been disrespected and offended by anybody in my life as this supervisor did with me; who trashed and yelled at me during the whole conversation. Obviously this supervisor doesn’t know treating people with respect; moreover when we the consumers pay his salary. No question that Enbridge is hiring supervisors with no education or soft-skills to relate with any people. I feel disappointed that a portion of my bills is for paying the salaries of individuals that don’t provide assistance or customer service at all; but the the contrary: offense and disrespect. I hope Enbridge CEO, Daniel Patrick looks after this note and take the corrective actions to avoid that nobody ever is treated miserably and his/her consumer rights are not violated.

From Nov.2004 to Nov. 2005, I was overcharged for gas to heat an apartment that I rented. I was forced to pay the said amount in the spring, and after I threatened to sue them,they sent me an unexplained refund of $600., and in addition,refunded the property owner over $1000. for the gas that had been used in my unit during the year 2004-2005. I was not able to speak to anyone in charge; my only contact was with extremely rude call center employees.At one point, I actually threw the phone out of frustration. I moved out of the unit in November 2005 and they have sent me several notification letters saying they owed me a refund of $56.38. I have yet to receive anything, and I feel that they owe me far more than that. I called in October 2005 to say I was moving out and still they have not sent me one penny! Other individuals have told me they are impossibly rude and difficult to deal with. Endbridge would be the first to cut off your heat if you didn't pay your bill on time.