After days of protests from customers, the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) has announced some adjustments to its billing cycle.

According to an article in last Friday's Gleaner, Garth McKenzie, metro region customer operations director at the company, said as of January 2009, no customer will be billed for a period exceeding 31 days. Recently, customers were billed for 41 days, rather than the usual 31, causing many of them to be overcharged.

Overcharged customers

But it is not only the fact that the company overcharged customers that made them angry, but that they were being told to pay the money while a solution is worked out.

Although JPS has extended opening hours to allow customers to go to its offices, we are still waiting to hear what will be the final and agreed resolution for handling these bills.

Will customers lose their electricity because they fail to pay the outstanding sum by the deadline, even though the company over billed them?

McKenzie did say JPS will be adjusting the affected customers' bills to reflect a 30-day period. While we commend what has been done, we look forward to hearing from the utility company what will be done to ensure that this is not repeated in the future.

We also hope that it will speed up its plans to build good relationships with customers so that the level of distrust exhibited during this latest mishap will not be as great in future.