Manchester Content With JCP&L Service, Despite Issues Elsewhere

Municipalities in northern New Jersey are making moves to dump electric provider Jersey Central Power & Light, though a Manchester official said that the township does not take issue with the utility's service. 

Robbinsville and Warren Township made the news earlier this month filing requests with the state Board of Public Utilities for permission to switch to Public Service Electric & Gas, and according to the Star Ledger, 14 other towns are considering the same move, spurred on by what they say was a poor response following recent storms.

Some Jersey Shore towns are , too, saying the company cares more about its bottom line than serving customers, and that communication between the company and municipalities is lacking during outage situations. 

But business administrator Elena Zsoldos said that her dealings with the utility have been responsive and the township is not among those considering a switch to another power provider.

"When we call them they are always very willing to support us," she said. "They always give us information whenever I call them. It may not always be exactly what I want to hear, but I get a response and I get the truth from them."

Zsoldos said that she has a contact at JCP&L and was able to get through every time she called or would have a missed call returned promptly.

"If I didn't get my area rep the first time I called, she would call me back in 20 minutes," she said. "They were very responsive to us." 

Zsoldos said that, in addition to homes, some township nursing facilities were left powerless in the wake of Hurricane Irene and JCP&L performed adequately to get power restored. 

"They really worked as quickly as they could, as far as we thought, to get the job accomplished," Zsoldos said. "We have no issue."

In a recent Patch interview, company spokesman Ron Morano said JCP&L has recently implemented several suggestions it received from mayors and customers across the state after the hurricane. When the Halloween storm hit, he said, the company held conference calls with officials.

“We communicated with the mayors throughout the entire storm,” he said. “In addition to the calls, we set up a special webpage, communicated estimations of customers by county, municipality and location within municipality — all suggestions that came about from meetings following the hurricane.”

The municipalities considering a switch were also harder hit by the storm than Ocean County, which may have spared the area some frustrations.

"They had a lot more flooding issues," Zsoldos said. "We were not affected as bad as some of those northern communities."