Got Opinion?

In my previous post, I described how the county was looking for input to the Comcast franchise renewal. I explained why you should be interested even if you are not a Comcast subscriber.

If this whets your appetite for more, consider serving on Montgomery County's Cable and Comunications Advisory Committee. The CCAC meets once a month to hear and discuss issues of relevance to the franchises, PEGs, the cable office, and other telecommunication related topics. The committee gets an opportunity to meet with the Executive and the Council on occasion to provide advice and insights.

It's a volunteer position but if you feel strongly about improving telecommunications in Montgomery County, it may be a good opportunity for you. The county has a web page on the CCAC which provides a bit more information. And I've written about my own service on the CCAC many times - you'll likely find this more revealing as I pull no punches. (I found my time on the CCAC to be valuable but it had its frustrations as well.) Please volunteer - both for the CCAC and to give input on the Comcast franchise renewal. Thanks!

Comcast Franchise Renewal

Comcast's franchise with Montgomery County was signed in 1998 to last a period of 15 years. I've never been through a renewal before but it's my understanding that in some sense, this is an opportunity to start from scratch. Anything in the prior agreement can be changed (except what is required by law).

In contrast, during the franchise, things that should be changed often don't get changed but there's little incentive for both sides to agree. We've seen this in the past with wording that turned out to be unclear such as the time it takes to reach a Comcast customer service representative by phone.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg. For example, it is unclear how the franchise applies to internet service. Although the franchise does mention internet service, it is with no specificity and current interpretation is that all the promises in the franchise apply only to video service. But that's absurd given that both run over the same cable. If your cable drop is severed, should you get a faster repair date if you're a video subscriber but not if you're internet-only?

Although the county has managed to push through a few fixes to the franchise, now is the time to do substantial rewrites. The county is inviting citizens to participate in focus groups from March 19-24. Here's what the county's announcement says:

Each focus group lasts two hours and refreshments will be provided. The focus groups are organized to encourage people with like interests to attend the same meeting to facilitate brainstorming, but anyone may attend any focus group. The same presentation and same questions will be asked at each focus group. You DO NOT have to be a Comcast customer to participate.

• Brainstorm about the future of Montgomery County Communications
• Learn about the cable system, media communications and new cable and broadband technologies
• Complete a questionnaire and help shape our future

You may wonder why it says you do not have to be a Comcast customer. There are several reasons for this. First, Comcast uses our rights-of-way so even if you're not a Comcast subscriber, you may be impacted by their use of the ROWs. (Imagine finding your lawn or driveway has been ripped up. Shouldn't you have some protections?) Second, the franchise generates money that is used by the county to fund other things. So you may benefit from these even if you don't pay any cable "taxes". Finally, if you have another provider such as Verizon, it's almost certain that when your provider's franchise is renewed, it will incorporate the same new terms.

To get more information on how to participate, go to Montgomery County's cable page.

Unfortunately, the county has organized its focus groups around organizations (neighborhood groups, religious groups, government agencies, etc.) so I suspect this will shape the ability to raise certain topics. And I mean that in a bad way.

Be prepared to hear a litany of "the county needs this" and "my organization deserves that" but also keep in mind that everything we ask for will ultimately come out of our pockets - just with an extra layer of provider profit grease in there as well. So I encourage you to ask for things to be cut back at the same time.

While I'm all for community, some of the expenditures that come out of the franchise are unjustifiable in my opinion. For instance, why do PEG channels require dedicated video channels when they can be streamed less expensively and accessed more conveniently over the web? And even if you find some of these "benefits" justifiable, ask whether it would be cheaper to pay for them explicitly rather than bury the costs behind layers of plans that make them difficult to control.

This bundling phenomenon is analogous to the question of who benefits from TV plans of 200 channels when we only watch 10 of them. (Answer: Not you.) What kind of pressure is needed to change this and other problems with our providers? Can we do it in the renewal or is it just a pro forma rubber stamp with a few goodies to fool citizens in to feeling they are getting something for nothing?

Lastly, while the county is controlling the participation process, there will be other opportunities. For example, there will be hearings and you can always contact the county council directly. The council itself must ultimately approve the franchise and council members can have a lot of influence in making changes to the franchise.

Let me know how you intend to participate (which focus groups) or any other ideas you may have for the renewal process.

Pepco Prolongs

It's been almost three months since I last posted a description of some of the things that had gone wrong with my thermostats provided through Pepco's Energy Wise Rewards (EWR) program. So where are we now? Still having problems.

I do finally have my two thermostats showing on the Pepco web page. So in theory, I could program them through the web. Alas, the website labels both thermostats "First Floor". While there are secondary user-settable labels, without the correct primary labels, I would have to spend time experimenting to see which thermostat responds and is the real first floor. However, I'd rather Pepco fix their labels - for two reasons: First, because of all the time delays and lack of feedback throughout the system, it's a hassle of unknown duration for me to do the experimenting. For Pepco to do it should be a trivial database update. Second, the lack of proper labels causes problems for Pepco already. When I call Pepco with a problem, Pepco wants to know the identification number of the thermostat. They don't know what thermostat I mean when I say "thermostat on the 2nd floor". So why doesn't Pepco put the identification numbers right there on its own web page?

Since reporting this to Comverge (Pepco's EWR contractor), they have yet to fix it - a change that should be trivial for them. In my most recent phone call, the Comverge representatives finally gave up and told me that they couldn't fix it, that only Pepco could and that I had to place the call. What? Comverge cannot call Pepco? So I called Pepco. That turned out to be a challenge just because Pepco's phone is answered with a phone tree that asks if you want to report an outage, pay a bill, and so on. As far as I could tell, all of these were automated. No choice was offered to reach a person. And none of the choices seemed relevant. Telephone tree hell.

At some point, I figured out that saying "representative" would break through the wall of automation and I was able to speak to a living, breathing human at Pepco. Of course, she started out by telling me to call the EWR number. After I explained that EWR referred me to Pepco, she said she would look into the problem. She also discovered that I hadn't been receiving the promised credits for participating in the program and she would investigate that as well. As long as she was so optimistic, I mentioned another problem I had noticed - that one of the thermostats didn't run the fan in the On position - a useful function when the temp is not high enough to run the AC for extended periods.

At least Pepco has been calling me back. Their most recent phone call informed me that my problems had been escalated. But why tell me this? I don't care what their internal procedures are. Just tell me when it's fixed or give me a date when it will be fixed. Vague assertions are of no value, waste my time, and only tell me that Pepco doesn't see things from the customer viewpoint - if that wasn't already painfully obvious.

So that's where we are now. I have to take time off for yet another appointment this week for a Pepco technician to visit the house, the web page still doesn't explain which thermostat is which, I declined to program the thermostat through its physical interface (as I explained previously), and Pepco still owes me for months of promised rebates.

When will this nonsense end?

Pepco Lowers the Bar

Many people have asked me why I haven't posted anything recently about Pepco's Energy Wise Rewards (EWR) program. The answer is in two parts: futility and futility.

First, it felt pointless to describe all the things that were going wrong with the EWR program because Pepco has been getting much more pressure over their inability to deliver reliable electricity service. If they can't even do the basics, why bother complaining about anything else? (According to the most recent issue of the Gazette, a new government study found that "Pepco is the worst electric service provider in the region" and performance "has steadily declined since 2004.")

Second, it felt pointless to try and get Pepco to respond to the problems with their EWR program because they apparently have set a very low bar for success. The rest of this post will justify that assertion.

I've had many conversations about the EWR program with Pepco and almost every one of them has included false, inaccurate, or unhelpful information. For example, last year Pepco discovered that the thermostat "could pose a potential fire hazard if the batteries leaked onto printed circuit boards" according to court documents. I received a robocall telling me to remove the batteries from my thermostat and I naturally called Pepco back for more detail. The representative responded that Pepco had made no such calls and I should leave the batteries in.

Later I read in the newspaper that the thermostats Pepco provided were recalled so I'm a bit surprised that Pepco never came around to replace them. Perhaps pulling the batteries is sufficient. But then why are there batteries in the first place? A Pepco representative told me that the only reason for the batteries was so that the thermostat could still display a clock when there is a power outage. People check their thermostats for the time during an outage? Huh? The batteries must be there for some other purpose - presumably to maintain the settings through such a power outage. A Pepco representative assured me that the thermostats hold the settings even without the batteries. However, my own experiments showed that to be a misleading answer because while literally true, without a battery, the thermostat fails to update its clock. So after an outage, the thermostat will continue with the right settings but at the wrong times. Another Pepco representative finally admitted to me that it could take up to 24 hours for the thermostat to get back the correct time.

Pepco continues to install the thermostats and sign people up for the EWR program. A Pepco representative told me that they have changed to a new brand of thermostat but I think the bulk of the problems are with the program and how Pepco administers it, not the thermostat. In fact, what originally sold me on the program was that I wouldn't ever have to deal with my physical thermostat. Sadly, this is not the case.

Recap

These are solely my own comments. You can find other people's experiences in the comments at the end of this post and earlier posts on this blog. I highly recommend perusing the comments.

To recap my own experiences, the first episode should have been an omen. The installer came to my house, installed the hardware and, as he was leaving, I asked if he could verify that the web interface worked. "No, we don't want to have any security problems like seeing your password. Just visit the website after I leave." After he left, I visited the website and found nothing. After a number of phone calls, I found that the web interface wouldn't be available for another 3 months. A lie in a stretch of many lies. (I got jerked around for only 3 months, but I know other people who signed up even earlier. Pepco first claimed the thermostat was web programmable 9 months before it was.)

That meant reprogramming all the settings into the new thermostat from its front panel, not a fun job since the interface requires hundreds of button pushes. It's hard to describe how bad it is. For example, to get to the first day's settings, you press the PGM key 10 times. (No, I am not rounding up.) To raise the temp from its default by 6 degrees requires another 6 button pushes. Now imagine doing stuff like this for each of 4 time periods for 7 days. Double it for heating and cooling. Double it again if you have a 2nd thermostat. (I have a two zone system.) Very painful.

I never did program it because Pepco kept making statements (some of which were forwarded to me by the Maryland PSC) that the internet access was coming "soon". Rather than put up with the physical interface, I just put the thermostat on hold - for 3 months. Now I'm thinking that Pepco owes me the difference comparable to what I would've saved had I stayed with my previous smart thermostats for 3 months. And Pepco owes me another week's worth plus several hours that I had to take off from work. Why? Because it took Pepco that much time to get my thermostats working. Apart from all the web problems, Pepco decided that one of the thermostats was defective (no connectivity) and replaced it. Then they replaced my other thermostat (I'll mention why later).

Web Interface

Pepco did eventually get the web interface running. And it is better than standing in front of the physical thermostat. But not by much.

The web interface shows 8 settings for a single day for a single thermostat. Here's what it looks like. I've trimmed it down to just showing the "heat
mode" so we're just looking at the 4 settings on Monday.



The first problem is that you cannot compare days. That is, you cannot show Monday and Tuesday at the same time because of that "Select a Day" pulldown. The next problem is … oh never mind, I won't go through the rest of it. I will merely summarize that it is outrageously bad design - as if someone wanted to show off their prowess with HTML by having lots of separate form elements, tabs, pulldowns, and so on.

A simple spreadsheet of all the settings in a single table would be much simpler. Indeed, Pepco's own documentation agrees and provides a spreadsheet template. But it's not even an Excel file. It's embedded in a non-editable PDF so all you can do is print it out. The worst kind of spreadsheet (paper) which then has to be laboriously rekeyed into the worst kind of user interface!

Verification

Assuming you get through the web interface, the next question is: How do you verify that it's working? Any changes made through the web interface end with the following popup:



This delay makes verification and debugging a very cumbersome process. After the 5 minute wait, it's made even more cumbersome because there's no short button sequence to check a setting on the physical thermostat. In my case, I use the 7-day settings and I first have to push-button my way through all the other settings I'm not using. And even then, there's no way to be sure that the thermostat is using the right mode (1-day, weekend/weekday, 7-day). The thermostat knows which mode it is in but won't reveal that to the front panel. So there's no way to directly confirm that the web programming worked. Between the delays, the lack of info, and the absurd number of button pushes to do anything, the system is a horror.

The reverse problem exists too. The web page won't show what the settings of the physical thermostat. There's no way to query the thermostat from the web. Of course, that didn't stop a Pepco representative from telling me that the web page does reflect changes at the physical thermostat but he couldn't explain how to do it. Another representative told me it was impossible.

It does seem like the website knows when it is wrong however. I occasionally see the message "Warning! This web page is not synchronized with your thermostat. Please choose your desired settings, then click SAVE to synchronize the settings with your thermostat." So the website is getting data from the thermostat - but not doing anything useful with it.

I called Pepco and asked what was the most expedient way to confirm the thermostat had the right settings. No one to whom I spoke could tell me although they all agreed it was a reasonable request.

I still don't understand the reason for the 5-minute delay in the web interface but surely it's an artificial delay and Pepco can bypass it during testing. So I called and asked: Could Pepco talk directly to the thermostat to confirm it was working? After many phone transfers, I ultimately found that there was one guy at Pepco (to be precise, at a contractor to Pepco) who could actually do such confirmation. During successive phone calls, I was informed that he was out of the office, on vacation, would return my call, etc. I was never able to reach him and he certainly didn't reach me. But what's the point? I don't want to have to call Pepco to confirm my settings. I want to do it myself. Unbelievably frustrating that their interface doesn't allow this.

I've done enough research at this point to realize that the hardware they've deployed supports it; Pepco simply doesn't make it available to the customer. Why not?

Other feedback elements are also missing. Pepco may be able to chart my temp and my energy consumption throughout the day. But they won't let me have it. Instead, their web page shows a generic explanation of my energy use by the month. But since they're not monitoring individual appliances, it's all hypothetical estimates based on a typical homeowner, not me. They had me fill out a survey of the number of TVs, computers, fridges, etc. So that narrows it down. But there is no connection to actual usage.

There are companies that offer products that will do this kind of monitoring for you; But Pepco seems content reporting inaccurate figures on my personal account page that have little relation to reality.

No Way

For now, I'd settle for a way to verify the programming. But according to Pepco representatives, there is no way for me to do it. There is no way to test a variety of potential connectives issues. There's no way to test signal strength. (The thermostat is wireless so if there's an issue with walls or transient problems with your microwave oven, it could be very difficult to solve. There's no way to test their router. (Pepco requires its own router; the thermostat cannot use an IP-style router that is traditionally used for internet service.) There's no way to open a direct connection to the thermostat via telnet or ssh. There's no user port to plug into. It's a black box.

This need for verification is not imagined. Twice I've found the settings in the physical thermostat to be different than what I set them to from the website. Is it a failure of the thermostat? communications glitch? web interface problem? It's impossible for me to find out.

The thermostat gives an indication of when it is communicating but it's just a simple icon on the display saying there is or isn't connectivity but it's unclear whether it's to the web or, more likely, just the router. And it's not even possible to see when the thermostat received its last update.

Of course, I've been told exactly the opposite of many things I've discovered through trial and error. Some of the conversations I've had could have been right out of Kafka. The responses from representatives warmly embrace their own dysfunctional design as if was the most natural thing. And if denying reality or making up info or passing on incorrect info seems helpful, why not?

Unreliable

As if the representatives aren't problem enough, the web interface is unreliable. I already described how ghastly it is - and that's when it's working. But I've encountered too many times when it doesn't work at all. Here are some example screen shots - the first shows that sometimes the site simply becomes unaccessible:


The next shows something strange happening. It comes and goes and I've learned that I can "fix" it by deleting all the pepco cookies in my browser - until it returns some time later:



Yet another problem occurs if you let the thermostat window idle too long. In that case, the session times out. However, it doesn't give an explicit timeout. Rather, after having spent a lot of time updating the configuration and then clicking Save to submit the new settings, the server throws them away and puts up the following screen. And, alas, it doesn't save your settings for when you log back in. In fact, you can't log in - because this login screen goes to some other page that doesn't know anything about you, hence the "Invalid Password" message. You'll get more and more frustrated because you'll never successfully log in to a page that looks like the regular Pepco login page but isn't.



I reported that timeout and bogus login page to a Pepco representative who confirmed the problem and said it appeared to be a maintenance screen that the public was not supposed to see. He said he would make sure it was fixed. That was last year. It's still not fixed 6 months later.

Here's another response I got from the server:

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, you@your.address and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Oracle-Application-Server-10g/10.1.2.4.0 Oracle-HTTP-Server Server at tao.pepcoholdings.biz Port 7777

Ok, I'm getting tired of describing the various bizarre symptoms of an unreliable web service. So I'll switch gears to some lessons learned . . .

Lesson Learned 1

Some of the Pepco thermostats are excessively noisy. Naturally, the one installed in my bedroom was one of these. Why would a digital thermostat make noise? No idea. But every few seconds, it would make clicking and grinding noises. Pepco came to the house, confirmed the noise, and swapped it out with a thermostat that made no noise. Let's hope they don't give my noisy old one to the next customer.

Lesson Learned 2

Guests are guaranteed some interesting times at my house. My parents like to drop in for the holidays and stay over. This requires that I change the settings. It would be useful if there was a way to program alternate settings into the thermostat. Several such alternate settings would be nice. But no, the EWR website doesn't offer this. You have to laboriously revisit 7x4x2x2 settings and then when the parental units leave, you have to laboriously reset everything.

Of course, you could just put the thermostat on hold. Wasteful of energy but easier on the button pushing. The EWR website has a Vacation Mode which lets you set a temp for a given amount of time. The first time I used this, I ran into problems. Since I knew when my parents were leaving my house, I plugged that in as the Stop Date. For the Start Date, I set it for the current time. Well, I tried. The website only deals in half-hour increments so I entered the previous half hour. And promptly got an error:



Now it may seem like common sense that you cannot go back in time but what's the alternative? The website doesn't offer "Now" as a starting time; I was forced to pick a time a half hour later. It's crazy that the system doesn't let you change the temp for an entire half hour. My father watched as I made this discovery. He recommended returning the thermostats.

Lesson Learned 3

Pepco doesn't always answer their phones. And when they do answer their phones, you may not get the service you hope for. Here's a conversation I made notes from this past Memorial Day weekend. I didn't record it but the quotes are pretty close to what was said:

5/26/2011
9:30pm - Called Pepco.
Pepco: "This is after-hours service."
Me: "I need help with my Energy Wise Rewards Thermostat."
Pepco: "That department is closed. Call back tomorrow between 8am and 8pm."
Me: "Wait, you don't have after hours service?"
Pepco: "Yes, this is after-hours service. We handle things like AC or heat not working."
Me: "Well, my AC isn't working!"
Pepco: "Oh, ok, well, let me see if I can find a tech to help you. I'll call you back."

10:23pm Pepco called.
Pepco: "Sorry but all the technicians are busy. Can you call back tomorrow and make an appointment?"
Me: "Well, you're not giving me any other choice, are you?"
Pepco: "No, sorry."

Following day…

5/27/2011
9:32am Called Pepco and described problem.
Pepco: "I know there have been sporadic problems. I will escalate this. Don't be surprised if they're calling you back very shortly."
11:40 I gave up waiting. Left house to go to work.

5/28/2011
6:00am Power out. My uninterruptible power supplies are all beeping so after ten minutes of hoping it will stop, I haul myself out of bed and power everything down.
11:28am After checking with the neighbors, I determine that only my house was out. So I called Pepco and registered an outage with their automated service.
4:00pm Several hours have gone by and I've eaten all the melting ice cream. Called Pepco for an update.
Pepco: "Expect service back by 7pm."
Me: "Thanks."
Pepco: "Have a nice holiday weekend."
Me: "I'll try."
Pepco:

7pm The technician said a squirrel shorted out a high-voltage line at the pole. (The dead squirrel at the base of the pole was a big hint.) He replaced an enormous fuse at the top of the pole and power returned to the house. Total outage: 12 hours. Time for Pepco to respond: 6 hours. Not bad for a single house. However, I'm still amazed that our electricity infrastructure is so fragile that a mere squirrel can bring it down.

As I write this, it's been a week and, although power is just fine, the website is still not allowing me to program my 2nd floor thermostat. So today, I called Pepco and asked what's going on.

After battling through their phone tree once again (and why does it have to ask me twice in Spanish to push numero uno at different levels in the tree?), I finally reached a representative who put me on hold for 15 minutes and then told me that Deea would speak to me now.

Deea:

Ok, so Deea wasn't there. I hung up, redialed, went through it all over again and finally insisted the representative hear both my voice and Deea's voice at the same time before clicking off. Thankfully, she got us both on the telephone.

I described the problem.

Deea: "Our records indicate that your 2nd thermostat was removed in October of 2010."
Me: "Yes, because it was defective. And you installed a replacement thermostat."
Deea: "Not according to our records."
Me: "So can you fix your records?"
Deea: "Are you calling from home?"
Me: "No."
Deea: "Ok, then let's send a tech out to your house."
Me: "Why? You just need to fix your records."
Deea: "We need to get the # of the thermostat. That's why I asked if you were calling from home."
Me: "No problem. When I go home this evening, I'll call it in."
Deea: "That won't work. The office closes shortly. However, the technician can call it in because he doesn't have to through the office."
Me: "So the tech works later than the office?"
Deea: "Yes. The office closes at 5pm. The techs work till 9pm. Otherwise, you'll have to wait until Monday."
Me: "Ok, send the technician."
Deea: "What time is good?"
Me: "8pm."
Deea: "Ok, 8pm. The tech will call your home phone 15 minutes before arrival."
Me: "Ok."

We had this conversation around 4pm. I was home by 7pm. By 9pm, no one had showed. I checked my email and voice mail. Sure enough, I had received a call at 5:30pm.

Technician: "I'll be there in 15 minutes."

To make this clear, a Pepco representative had assured me a technician would show up at a specific time. I was there an hour early but the technician was there 2 hours early. He didn't wait. And all for the unnecessary reason that Pepco wanted to send a person out to read some numbers because 1) they couldn't keep track of their own records for work they had done and 2) their offices are open at different times then their technicians work.

<Insert scream here.>

Conclusion

Although I've hung in with Pepco on this Energy Wise Rewards program for a long time, I'm run out of patience. Pepco isn't giving this program the support that it needs. It's just not a priority for Pepco no matter what it claims to the contrary.

Thus, I strongly recommend customers considering the Energy Wise Rewards program to avoid it at all costs. While there is a financial reward tied to participation, it clearly is not worth it. And while the internet programming feature is attractive, I suspect that an independent provider would offer better support and better experience. Please let me know in the comments area if you've experimented with any other solutions for remote thermostat monitoring and control and whether or not you are satisfied.

PS: As of 6/4/2011, my 2nd floor thermostat is still inaccessible from the Pepco website. The thermostat remains on hold.

Advice Wanted

Interested in serving on the CCAC of Montgomery County, MD? There's an opening and you have until July 9 to apply.

If you're not familiar with the Cable and Communications Advisory Committee, it advises the County Executive and Council on cable and telecommunications issues. This includes cable TV franchises, PEGs, and maybe even internet thermostats (sigh).

If you are selected, your first task can be to get the committee's online records up-to-date. Their records haven't been updated for three months.

Here is a link to the current members of the committee. Mmm, perhaps I should say last known members, since that page is likely out-of-date as well.

In theory anyway, these are your representatives. Feel free to contact them to ask what their experience serving on the committee is like. Or ask them about communication-related issues of concern to you. Oh, you can't figure out how to contact them? Their names aren't linked to an email address? There's no phone number? How about that! (Your second task: Make the members more accessible to the citizens who they are supposed to represent!)

PS: I couldn't get the web page (above) for the PEGs to respond either. It is the correct link though. One more thing for you to look into.

Pepco Ignores

Since my earlier post about Pepco's Energy Wise program, many people have emailed me with stories similar to mine. The only difference is that some are even worse.

Here are some of the additional complaints:

Thermostats not working, even from the front panel.

Thermostats not installed correctly.

Thermostats making frequent clicking noises.

Full manuals for thermostats unavailable.

That's apart from my earlier complaints:

Installers shortened wires unnecessarily.

Installers used wrong tools.

Installers showed up late.

Website control is unavailable.

Website requires another browser.

Thermostat needs an additional router port.

After repeated calls to Pepco, I was able to speak to the manager of the thermostat installations, Craig Snedeker. If this name is not familiar to you, you may like to read some of my posts about Comcast. Here's an excerpt from Comcast Blasts Holes In Itself in 2004:

Comcast GM Craig Snedeker was brought in last year [2003] to fix all the problems in MC MD, yet there is little evidence of him doing so. Complaint levels are higher than ever (3x last year's!) and communication between the county and Comcast appears to be broken, much like the "walled garden" in which Comcast placed my cable modem a few weeks back for no reason at all.

Comcast is a powerful company with real strengths. Yet they appear to be throwing it all away. The blame-Verizon strategy isn't working. Comcast had a huge advantage as the de facto monopoly in MC. But if they keep running their system into the ground, it's hard to imagine why customers will continue to put up with their abusive service.

Craig resigned in 2005, at which time I wrote another post. An excerpt:

The most senior official in charge of Comcast in Montgomery County has resigned. After only 2 years on the job, General Manager and VP Craig Snedeker resigned for "personal" reasons according to company spokesman Jim Gorden in this week's Gazette.

Why Am I Not Surprised

Snedeker arrived on the heels of the disasterous period 2 years ago when performance was so bad that the county flexed its muscle by establishing cable modem regulations and further extending regulations for all customers (both HSI and TV) with the creation of the Cable Compliance Commission. This had to have been a huge wakeup call to Comcast Corporate. God forbid, other franchises should follow MC's lead.

So Comcast dumped the GM at the time (Sue Reinhold) and brought in GM-extraordinaire Snedeker. What did he do? Well, a few things did improve such as adding redundant hardware in places. But as far as I could tell, customer service was a non-priority while the company aimed at higher-margin products, specifically, the high-end video products such as digital TV and HDTV. Apart from that emphasis on higher profit, Snedeker spent time rubbing elbows with politicos and continuing Comcast's tradition of corporate largesse to pacify community groups - but what about the customers? You guessed it - plenty of customers have continued to be unhappy with Comcast service.

Complaint levels filed with county regulators are now higher than we've ever seen. Part of this is no doubt due to Verizon installers inadvertently cutting Comcast lines. But, as I personally testified at a county hearing last month, many complaints could not possibly be the cause of Verizon. Comcast must shoulder the blame. I don't know if Comcast has been cutting costs on training or squeezing out money elsewhere, but quality seems to be disappearing as well. And with that go the customers.

Back to the Present

I'm not blaming Pepco's problems solely on Craig here. Clearly Pepco has plenty of blame to spread around. Yet no one I spoke to at Pepco seemed to think their behavior was a problem. And although each representative was happy to give me their supervisor's name and number, none of the representatives was willing to take any action personally.

I can thank Craig for one thing. He gave me the person at Pepco to whom he reports. He said Avolon Joseph is in charge of the project. A search on the web turned up her title as Manager of Strategic Planning & Initiatives.

So I called Avalon and left a message with my phone number and email address. Perhaps she was on vacation so I waited a few days. And a few days more. After a week and half, I called again. This time I reached her in person:

Me: Can I ask you some questions about Energy Wise program?

Avolon: Yes but I'm in a meeting right now. Can I call you right back?

Me: Yes.

Avolon: Ok.

Me: Bye.

Avolon: Bye.

If you're expecting more, you'll be disappointed. I waited for the rest of the day. The rest of the week. And the following week.

At this point, I feel totally frustrated. I've already filed a complaint with the MD Public Service Commission. No word back from them either. I attached the earlier blog post to it. I'm thinking that I'll attach this one to an additional complaint.

In addition, I gave Craig the URL to the blog so he could read it himself. Doubtless he won't be pleased but perhaps he will take some action.

As for Avolon: You may choose not to return my calls but you are making for very unhappy customers. And just like any service provider, we will look for all possible ways to avoid dealing with bad ones. I've already switched my electricity generation and transmission services to a competitor. And I encourage others to switch, to file complaints with the MD PSC, and to testify at hearings involving Pepco services. You leave customers no other choice.

Energy Unwise

Amidst the blizzard of advertising I receive each week for Verizon FIOS, I have also been receiving ads from Pepco for their Energy Wise Rewards program.

If you live in Montgomery County, Maryland, you've probably been getting these letters, too. Part of Pepco's offer is for a free internet-capable thermostat. Yes, free. Free installation and free service, too. Gosh, it's hard to ignore free service. I'm used to anything to do with my heat pump either requiring a $100 minimum service call or me spending oodles of time staring at my current programmable thermostat which tells me everything but why the heating system isn't doing what the thermostat says it is.

Why would Pepco make this offer? Remember that Pepco sold off their generation facilities so now they have to buy electricity. My bet is that Pepco has a sliding scale determining how much they pay for energy. Anything over a certain amount costs Pepco significantly more than it is able to charge its customers (who buy electricity at a fixed rate). So Pepco wants to sell us lots of energy but not too much.

How does Pepco plan to get customers to consume less? Rather than using rebates to encourage voluntary conservation as other jurisdictions are doing, Pepco is offering to be a bit more heavy-handed with rebates. The thermostats Pepco provide have a remote cutoff so Pepco can turn off customer AC or heat pumps remotely during periods of high energy use. This is fine for people who don't work at home during the middle of the day - exactly when Pepco is likely to cut the AC. Pepco assured me that it happens very rarely and there are ways to override the cutoff in the rare event that it is necessary. It all sounded good to me.

Long-time Washingtonians may recall Pepco's Kilowatchers program. Pepco installed radio-controlled cutoffs on major electrical appliances in the home. For reasons unknown to me, Pepco suspended Kilowatchers many years ago. But the essence is reborn in the Energy Wise program. And if you don't want Pepco messing with your thermostat, Pepco will happily put an old-style dumb cutoff on your AC or heat pump. You don't even have to be home. Pepco says that reason alone explains why most people are opting for the dumb cutoff over the internet thermostat.

But I liked the idea of the internet thermostat. Pepco promised better energy statistics, better usability (imagine having the house at the right temp upon getting back from vacation and yet saving money at the same time), and more. The best part was the idea of sitting at my desk and being able to see a week's worth of thermostat settings at a glance. That sounds so much better than what I have to do now - manually push buttons to see 4 settings x 7 days x 2 seasons! Besides the 56 different periods, each period can then require many button presses to adjust the temp and time. So we're talking a couple hundred button clicks! Ack! Admittedly, my thermostat lets me copy days that have a common schedule - but my family's schedule is different almost every day of the week so I cannot use that feature very much.

By comparison, Pepco representatives repeatedly told me that the web interface would show a simple list that would be simple. Simple. Simple. Simple. How hard could it be to screw this up? Even a simple spreadsheet would be easier than all those damn button clicks required by a physical thermostat.

So after contemplating this for awhile (and throwing away many months worth of Pepco mailings), I finally made the call. Sign me up!

Pepco Shows . . . Late

I accepted an appointment for Tuesday morning. I was told that I could have a window from 8am-11am. You can probably guess where this is going.

I took the whole morning off from work. At 10:30am, I started to worry and called Pepco. The representative assured me that the technician merely needed to arrive inside the window and could complete the work outside the window. I sure wasn't told anything like that when I originally set up the appointment. Sure enough, the technician and showed up at 11:00am. Grrr.

The technician brought along a trainee to watch and assist. So I asked if I could watch too. No problem, I was told.

First, the technician installed a wireless networking device on my router. To control the thermostat, Pepco uses a home-area network system called Zigbee. The Zigbee controller is an Ethernet device that is supposed to plug in to the homeowner's router. And although I have a router, it didn't have a spare port. Why didn't Pepco tell me about this in advance? I had assumed the thermostat would be a WiFi device. Alas no. So I temporarily unplugged something else from my router in order to plug in the Zigbee and get the thermostat working. My advice to others: Customers without spare ports should ask Pepco in advance whether they need to buy an Ethernet hub or Pepco will provide one.

I have two heat pumps with separate thermostats so the technician replaced my thermostats with two new ones. I was a little annoyed that he clipped off the wires rather than unscrewed them. There's not a lot of slack left in my thermostat cables. It would only have taken another minute to unscrew them. But I had already pointed out that he was using the wrong kind of screwdriver to remove the old thermostat from the wall. Nor did he have a wire stripper. Why don't these guys come with the right tools? The hell with professionalism. I could not believe this guy was training people. In the interest of expediency, I kept my mouth shut.

When he was done, I asked him to show me Pepco's website to control the thermostats. "We leave homeowners to do that on their own." He made reference to people not being comfortable with Pepco personnel knowing their password. That made no sense - after all, it's Pepco's system. Pepco has complete control over it. It hardly matters that whether Pepco personnel know my password or not - Pepco can still control my thermostat. I pressed him on this and finally he said he just didn't have the time - he had other appointments. Since he showed up late for mine, I could hardly argue with him over that point. Although both thermostats were turned off, I let him go.

At The Computer

I surfed over to the url he had given me to register an account at pepco.com/rewards. Forgive me if I drag you through the details but I must. They deserve a thorough airing if only to show website designers what to avoid.

The website starting by asking me for 3 pieces of personal information. Let's call it pseudo-information because it was all from my monthly statement. How stupid - if you open someone's mailbox and take their bill, you have all the personal information needed to masquerade as them! If you're going to get all the information from a bill, it doesn't matter whether you ask for 3 pieces of information or 100.

Next, Pepco required completion of a captcha (distorted bits of text you are required to type in). Captcha's don't identify people - they merely prove it's not a robot filling out the form. But that's pointless given that the form just asked for information that could only have come from one person's statement. Whoever decided on their security measures didn't know the basics. Or was overridden by bad corporate policy.

The next web page asked for really personal information just in case I forgot my password in the future. No doubt you've encountered this before. I was presented with a choice of things like mother's maiden name, name of first pet, and so on. This design is a disaster. By insisting on information that only you know, it immediately becomes information that not only you know. Because now Pepco knows it. And since these same questions are used for password recovery by many financial institutions, access to your money and identity has been granted yet another way to be compromised.

Sadly, I have found that people really do see my personal information. My most convincing encounter with this reality came when I was telecommuting one day and found that my password wasn't working. I phoned the computer support staff at my own place of employment and they proceeded to ask me my personal questions, listen to my answers, and confirm the answers matched those on file. In other words, other people were seeing things that only I should know. Fortunately, I had planned ahead and read back the answers I had given years earlier. The name of my elementary school: a. My first pet's name: ab. My favorite sport: abc. And so on.

You may not like my solution. You may complain that it's impossible to memorize and recall this information if it's completely artificial. Correct. But it's a fair tradeoff for true security (not to mention personal privacy). And even if you answer the questions seriously, recalling the correct answers may be difficult. Consider that one of Pepco's security questions was "What is the earliest phone number you can remember?" The problem with this kind of question is that it is likely to change over time. It is a near certainty that there will come a time when my answer is different. Memory fades after all. In fact, many of the questions were of that type. Favorite fruit? Favorite color? And so on. How many people have the same favorites for the rest of their lives? (The alternative is to ask questions of fact but that has problems, too, as Sarah Palin found out when her yahoo account was compromised thanks to questions easily answered from her Wikipedia page.)

Sorry for that digression but I've never read a thorough explanation of all the problems with this type of password recovery system so I thought I'd put it down for the record. I resisted sharing it with the Pepco representative even though, by this time, I had already phoned Pepco for help. In fact, I called earlier, having failed at the first step - getting the pseudo-personal info from my statement. Evidently, my statement didn't square with their view of it.

The representative was happy to stay on the line as I completed the remainder of the page, the next page, and so on. Finally, I got to the fifth and last page. Whew! But instead of a welcome screen, I got: The system is unable to process your request at this time. Please contact a Pepco representative if you continue to have trouble.

Since I was already on the phone with just such a representative, contacting one was a snap. (The first thing that went easily that day.) She couldn't explained what had gone wrong but decided it was because I was using the wrong browser. ("We don't support Safari or Chrome.") I doubted that was an issue because the pages were just simple forms and, after all, I had successfully completed four of them. The diagnostic smelled to me like an issue on their end.

However, a quick look at the source showed me that their service was Microsoft-based so, yes, compatibility could be an issue. She told me to use Internet Explorer. I told her "I'm on a Mac; there is no IE for MacOS." She then assured me that Firefox was supported. So I went through their signup pages again. Again: There is a problem with the system. Please contact a Pepco representative for assistance.

This may not have been the exact message (I didn't bother to copy it down) but it was definitely different than the previous one. (What's the point of more than one type of uselessly vague error messages?)

At this point, the Pepco representative did something on her end and I was able to log in. Only to be showered with new forms. The system wanted me to fill out a detailed questionnaire regarding my house - size, construction, windows, etc. After getting out of this rat's nest, the representative told me how to get to the page to pay your bill and set up Auto Bill Pay.

Me: But I don't want to pay my bill or set up Auto Bill Pay!

Pepco 1: You don't? Isn't that why you called?

Me: I called so I could get access to my Pepco-provided internet thermostat.

Pepco 1: Oh, you want a different number.

Me: Are you sure? I dialed the number I was given and got to you.

Pepco 1: Yes, I'm sure.

Me: Ok, what's the number.

Pepco 1: 866 353-5798

Me: That's the number I dialed to get you. Please transfer me - don't make me call a number that will bring me right back to you.

Pepco 1: Uh, hold on.

Finally, I was transferred to a different person:

Pepco 2: What can I do for you, sir?

Me: I'd like to know how to access my Pepco-provided internet thermostat.

Pepco 2: I'd be happy to redirect you to a person who can take your request to have a thermostat installed.

It took a while but finally I convinced her that I already had the thermostat installed and just needed the url to the page to control it. She then broke the bad news. "That feature is not available yet."

How Could This Be

I'll skip the lengthy discussion that ensued. Suffice to say, after I was certain that she had to be confused or misinformed, I spoke to her supervisor, Dave Boyer, who explained that the functionality was still being tested by Pepco employees who had the thermostat in their homes.

What? How could this be? Wasn't it tested before being advertised? And hadn't it been advertised for months? (I have an email pointing out that it was advertised to be available in the summer of 2009!) The supervisor had no good explanation.

He didn't understand why I was unhappy, so I explained about the hundreds of button pushes that would be required to program the new thermostat. (Wait, multiply by two because I have two of them!) And I would have to learn how to use the thermostat - a thermostat with a tiny screen and just a few buttons, each overloaded with lots of modes and functions. Ugh. All in all, an experience I really didn't want. And certainly not the one I had been promised.

The supervisor offered to send out a technician to uninstall the new thermostats and reinstall the old ones - no charge. I thanked him for the offer while pointing out that based on my past experience, it would require me to sacrifice another half day off from work to do the reinstall and possibly another half day to re-reinstall the new one. He said that the technician could call me at work so that I could leave in time to meet him at my house - and that this courtesy was always available. But why wasn't I told this before?

I also expressed my displeasure over a number of other things - such as the way the program was advertised. Had I known Pepco was not ready, I would have waited. Pepco shouldn't have advertised at all. At the very least, Pepco should have explained the true state of the customer experience. Before signing up originally, I spoke to a Pepco rep who very clearly extolled how easy it was to use the system. How could this be if it wasn't even available? I asked the supervisor whether he had one of the Pepco thermostats. Answer: No. "Not available in my area."

I told the supervisor that I now faced a decision. Should I make another appointment for a Pepco technician to come reinstall my old thermostat? Or should I wait for Pepco to finish their testing betting that the outdoor temp wouldn't get too cold or too hot in the meantime. I asked the supervisor when the web interface would be available. He thought sometime in June. I asked him to find the person who knew for sure - surely someone must be in charge there - and get a real answer.

After placing me on hold for awhile, the supervisor came back on the phone and admitted that he couldn't get hold of the project manager but that the manager was due to show up in two days and he would get me a clear answer then. (What? No one can get a hold of the project manager for two days?) That was five days ago. I have not received any word from anyone at Pepco since.

At this point, I've filed a complaint with the Maryland Public Service Commission which regulates Pepco.

Needless to say, Pepco needs to do more than just testing. It needs to fix: its web interfaces, its privacy and security practices, its installation practices, its advertising, and finally, how it communicates with customers. If customers are so badly misled, Pepco shouldn't expect customers to sign up for its programs, no matter how good they turn out be.

Indeed, I related this story to several people and each one had a Pepco tale of woe. One of my friends said that he filed a complaint with the MD PSC last year about the same program. It seems that Pepco had advertised the program would be available last summer and it wasn't available. I've also found Pepco's blog which has lots of people complaining about the web billing system. I am experienced enough to avoid Auto Bill Pay systems but how naive was I to have signed up for the internet thermostat?

Several of the people I spoke to asked why I would trust Pepco to have control over my thermostat. Now I'm wondering what could I have been thinking when I agreed to this.

More importantly, my house is cold.