Reconnect your power? ComEd says 'Press 2 for English'
When Dino Mazella called the ComEd phone number on his bill, his ears sizzled like a plate of red-hot fajitas.
The toll-free number rang and when Edison's phone recording began, this is what the suburban resident heard:
"Para seguir en español oprima el numero 9."
Mazella, who is 100 percent of Sicilian heritage, doesn't speak a lick of Spanish and had no idea what had been said.
But he fully understood the next part of the recording.
"To continue in English, press 2."
Mr. Mazella is a 42-year-old English-speaking American.
"The message starts out in Spanish and then in English says 'Press 2 for English'!" Mazella recounts in amazement.
He is correct.
I called the 800 number at the top of his bill and it answered in Spanish.
"Para seguir en español oprima el numero 9."
Translated, that means if you want to continue in Spanish press the No. 9.
Mazella works as a computer technician, which these days is about as all-American as you can get. He moonlights as the audio engineer for a popular local band called 7th Heaven.
"Press 2 for English? Good grief!" he said. "I have never before heard of English being choice No. 2 on any menu. Though I think I might if I lived in Mexico."
But he doesn't live south of the border. He lives northwest, in Schaumburg, in a home that he just bought a few months ago.
Since moving in, Mazella has wrestled with ComEd about his bill. Somehow, the payments he had been making were being applied to the wrong account and his bills showed a growing past due amount.
Mazella had made many calls to the main ComEd customer service line, 1-800-EDISON1 to try to fix the problem. That primary phone number is answered in English.
But he had no luck getting the situation resolved before a disconnection warning showed up in the mail.
"Your electric service will be shut off … because a $187.79 utility bill is past due," the notice stated. "To contact us regarding your account, call ComEd at 1-800-203-0684."
That was the phone number that answered in Spanish.
And that is what has Mazella the most perturbed. He suspects that ComEd may be sending a not-so-subtle message that Hispanic customers are more likely to have their power cut off.
"This is disturbing," he said. "The disconnection notice is the one with the press 2 for English (800-203-0684). Would ComEd be making a statement that more Spanish-speaking people get disconnection notices?"
"Absolutely not," answered Judy Rader, a ComEd spokeswoman, when I asked if the giant electric utility was sending a subliminal message.
"In response to your question about whether the two phone numbers (800-EDISON1 and the other number the customer cited) were set up differently on purpose, absolutely not," she said.
According to spokeswoman Rader, "the two automated phone systems were programmed differently, but both provide customers with the option to transact business in the manner most comfortable for them."
Actually, if customer comfort were the case, then we'd able to press 3 to get out of paying the upcoming rate hike and press 4 to deduct a few dollars from the company CEO's salary of $7,000 an hour.
For better or worse, ComEd is not alone in its exhibition of dialing diversity.
These days, a real human being rarely answers the phone at big companies. You almost always have to make a choice to continue in English. Then, after waiting for the English instructions, you are put on hold and thanked many times by another robotic voice because your business is important.
During the "short wait" that may be anywhere from three minutes to an hour, you are forced to endure silence, punctuated by an occasional message that serves to jar you awake. Such a captive audience might be better served by listening to a Berlitz Spanish lesson, so the next time they call ComEd the recording might actually be understandable.