Power Trip

How El Paso Electric Discontinuing In-Person Payment Options Severely Affects A Good Amount of Clients

Now, when I decided to start blogging again, I wanted to make sure I was genuine to myself and my beliefs. I can be a curmudgeon, a la Andy Rooney, but if it feels put on, then it just won’t work. Being this “consumer advocate” on social media, primarily with banks the last few years has taught me a lot of lessons that I try to apply with my every day life. Basically lesson number one is don’t bullshit people who get bullshitted on a daily basis. Simple as that.

I lied for a living working for Bank of America, and I shilled accounts for people who didn’t need them to help myself, my boss, and my billion dollar company. While some people benefitted from me sales pitching to them, some people are content with not needing certain things to get by, bank accounts being one of them. There is a contingent of people out there that carry cash, go make money orders at the gas station, and don’t know the joys of banking online.

A huge chunk of those people are elderly. I will classify being elderly as >50 years old for the purposes of this argument. Holy shit, I am a decade away from being elderly then! NOOOOOO!!!!

People of color tend to have higher numbers of people who don’t have what I define as a traditional bank account, whether it is on purpose, or something nefarious like being underserved in their community. As a person of color, I feel that big banks are starting to underserve and unbank more and more people in high-minority areas than ever before, using the cloak of, “We don’t need to have a branch. You have us at your fingertips with your mobile device!” as a means to not actually give tailored help to people.

Long story short, there are a lot of people who don’t bank like the way banks want them to. While COVID increased the awareness of digital bill payments for a lot of the population who weren’t adept at such things, there still remained a good amount of people who liked cash in hand going to a place where they owed money, paying what they owed, and getting a receipt to put in a bank bag.

It’s weird to me as a fully digital person, but being a bank manager for years to a community with a lot of older people, I know it means a lot to those people and that’s the way they are comfortable.

So this leads me to why I am here today. El Paso Electric, the local energy company here in Southern NM and El Paso, TX metro area made an announcement the other day that really pissed me off for a bit, and then made me sad for the tons of elderly people and underbanked/underserved people who will be impacted by this news.

So it was announced last week that El Paso Electric would be closing its payment centers in my hometown of Las Cruces, NM in February, following the footsteps of the El Paso, TX payment centers that already closed down.

(Photo Credit: Algernon D’Amassa - Las Cruces Sun-News 2021)

First off, just look at the building. It looks like it is straight out of the 1960s. You are almost expecting some men with fedoras and unfiltered cigarettes to be coming out of the door with their wives who have bras on that are so pointy, they may actually be more of a cause of blindness than Ralphie either shooting his eye out or getting soap poisoning in “A Christmas Story”.

Sorry about the bra joke.

But it’s an old school building that serves a very old school purpose. Basically this building was here to just accept payments for the electric bill.

Now, I know what you east coasters are thinking.

I also know what you techie-geeks are thinking. Yes, Seven of Nine in “Star Trek Voyager” IS HOT! (I read your fan fiction…pervert)

But also, “People STILL do that?”

Yes, people do.

Although El Paso Electric will state that only about 5 percent of their clientele uses their payment centers to make an in-person payment. It is a small slice of pie consistent with a slice you would get at a birthday party in your classroom. But it is still thousands of people that are basically being underserved, and frankly, fleeced for a couple bucks that they sorely need during these “unprecedented times.” (I haven’t used that phrase since 2021.)

Nonetheless, I am pissed for a variety of reasons.

First off, I am a grandma’s boy. I am fortunate to have one of my grandmas still living as of this blog post. She is 82 years old, and I love her to death. She is the person who raised me the most when I was a little kid. I inherited a lot of her traits including her fear of public places for the longest time, and while it was a bitch to shed that as I got into the banking world, I still carry a lot of her mannerisms. I also understood a lot of their quirks, some of which helped me understand older folks at the bank.

One of them? If you are older and Hispanic or Black and live in a low to lower-middle class area, you likely prefer carrying cash and paying with cash over a bank account with a checkbook and/or a debit card. Period. I don’t have hard numbers. I know what I know from them and from the hundreds of people like them I helped over the years. Trust me, I tried to sell these old people products that would take them into the digital age, and they wouldn’t budge. It’s just their nature.

Before I worked at a bank, up until I was 21-22 years old, I would accompany my mom and grandma to get their SSI money from their local bank. They still got a paper check until the feds made them get direct deposit. They would cash their check, and then go back to my Grandpa.

He would then confirm the exact amount of money that was taken out, just like he was a bank auditor or cash logistics manager at a casino, and then have my mom or me go make money orders for the exact amounts of his bills. Electricity, Utilities (Gas/Water), Cable, Insurance, etc.

We would then go to the post office and make those money orders and either mail them to the destination of some of those companies. Even crazier. Some of the time we would make the money order just to take it to the local electric company payment center to make the payment in-person. It was 1289328x more work than hitting a couple numbers on a bill pay service that we do now, but it was just their way and what they preferred.

I miss those Monday trips with the family across my tiny hometown of Socorro, NM.

Working for a major bank taught me there was hundreds of people just like my grandparents when it came to paying bills. There were people that I met that couldn’t bank with me because a divorce, bankruptcy, prison time, or something else caused an issue with chexsystems which made them not able to bank with us. This sucked for me and them because I couldn’t get a new client out of it. So these people rely on doing what my grandparents do to pay the bills. It is still alive and well in 2023.

That is until El Paso Electric fucks it up by closing these centers in my new hometown.

Now, I read this news last week, and I grumbled similar to how my grandpa grumbles when the Dallas Cowboys lose. On that note, oh shit, the Cowboys lost today. I bet he is pissed! But it wasn’t until I went to downtown Las Cruces this weekend to go celebrate my beloved NMSU Football team winning a bowl game for the 2nd time in 62 years that I got a little more pissed at the news.

Go Aggies!

So, my wife and I were looking for parking for the plaza where the celebration was happening. A weekly farmers market coupled with this pep rally meant parking spots were at a premium in this normally parking friendly city. We circled the blocks until we found a spot near the El Paso Electric Payment Center that will soon be closing down. I walk by it, which has a little drive-up bank window on the side for people to not have to get down to make payments and I saw these big signs.

Drive-Up Window Payments Only. No Credit or Debit Cards. MON-FRI 8am-5PM

I bet you are saying, “So what?”

So, I have a problem with the middle part of that. No Credit or Debit Cards, eh? Why? I bet you a million dollars that the reason they give is “fraud prevention” when they have an angry client who actually carries plastic and wants to know why they can’t pay with it there. I know it. I have dealt with business owners who still see accepting credit cards as some threat to their bottom line because of the remote possibility someone may be paying with a stolen card.

But a company like El Paso Electric who has a revenue of $800,000,000 a year likely didn’t accept payments at this center because they may have to pay a 1.5% - 3% fee for a handful of people to slide their debit or credit cards to pay the bills. Oh, poor them. They would have been out a few grand every month because of this horrible thing of having to accommodate the clients. Heavens to Betsy. But they didn’t accept it, meaning that you have to go there with a check/money order or cash… like my grandparents.

So, because of a trope that all credit card transactions are sketchy or a lack of desire to eat a couple bucks per client to make their lives easier, this company actually trained these clients they are now impacting to pay their bills the way they now don’t want them to do. Ridiculous.

Then I went back to read the talking points that EPE used in announcing the closure of these payment centers.

Less than 5% of their clients pay this way. Ok. But 5% of a reported 460,000 clients is still 23,000 clients. The 460k is straight off their website.

I searched for the article I read before I saw these signs. This is a slice of the Las Cruces Sun-News article about this issue: (You can read the article in full here)

According to EPE’s Regional Director for Governmental Affairs Eric Montgomery, the move is an attempt to eliminate in-person payments.

“A lot of this is really due to new technologies and advancements that we are implementing,” Montgomery told the Doña Ana Board of County Commissioners Tuesday.

According to EPE’s Director of Customer Care Robert Heimer, less than 5 percent of all utility customers pay in person at one of the four branch offices in New Mexico and Texas.

Ok, so first of all, it took 2 fucking people to bullshit the city government with talking points? That sounds like corporate excess to me. Did we need BOTH Eric and Robert on this mission? I didn’t think so.

Secondly, let’s break down what Eric said. “..new Technologies and Advancements that we are implementing.”

This sounds stunningly full of shit, as my hero George Carlin would say. So new technologies like online bill pay that have been around for a generation now? New advancements like eliminating cash logistics from your company, which comes at a cost when you bank at a high volume with almost any bank. Yes, people who are not bank savvy, banks charge for accepting deposits when you are a business client.

This reeks like you are actually trying to increase profits and cutting costs, not helping your clients, boys.

Here’s more fun stuff from Robert Heimer via this article:

Heimer said closing the branches comes down to saving money. In addition, since so few people use the centers, Heimer said EPE wants to focus on meeting people via other access points.

Meeting people via other access points? What the fuck does that even mean? Seriously, I am a college graduate, and I like to use big words to impress my family, and even I don’t know what “other access points” means. I don’t want to meet you anywhere.

It is post-COVID and I am used to being at home all the time. I don’t want to meet you or your coworkers, Robert. Unless I have to pay my bill in person, I really don’t think an interaction between us is necessary.

Access points sounds like leftover terminology that someone who climbs poles for a living would use during a repair of a substation. “We need to get to the other access point to restore power to 2800 customers after the hailstorm.”

Come on, dude.

So seeing that they trained their clients into what they now feel are bad habits is on them. Closing the payment centers with short notice is in bad taste.

But that’s not the fun part. Oh, no.
Here’s the section about how clients can NOW make their payments:

For the 5 percent of in-person payers, EPE has a few alternatives for bill payment.

Via EPE’s website, utility customers can pay via credit card, ATM/debit card, or electronic check. For every bill, this option tacks on a $1.50 to $2.35 fee.

So… they finally got on the plastic train, eh? Tacking on a “convenience fee” to subsidize the processing fee you get hit on by your payment processor, eh? Charging for an “electronic check” when it is basically another way of saying “auto draft”, eh?

So those 5% of people now have “more options” to pay their bills… and pay a bullshit fee. I should note that EPE has had this option to pay with a fee for as long as I have been paying an electric bill in this area in my name, which is well over a decade.

Another option:

Another option includes using payment kiosks in El Paso, Van Horn and Las Cruces. However, the kiosks may have a fee depending on how customers pay. In addition, third-party payment agencies like CheckFree or Western Union accept payments with an attached cost. According to a news release from EPE, over 100 third-party payment agencies are in EPE’s service area. Stores like Walmart, Dollar General and many grocery stores host these agencies.

With the payment centers closing, third-party payment agencies and kiosks will be the only way to pay electric bills with cash.

Oh, ok. So they can pay with the cash they prefer somewhere else other than the building you are closing, but CheckFeee, Western Union or kiosks will impose a fee as well… or as you say, “an attached cost”. Over 100 third-party payment agencies are available to make these payments? Cool, but the slide the article has basically proves my point for me. Check it out.

All those Lowe’s grocery stores in Las Cruces/El Paso and Food King stores mentioned are known widely as “The Mexican Grocery Stores”, which means mostly Mexican people go there to shop. I go to Lowe’s for fresh tortillas myself. But seriously, as a Mexican man, I can tell you that is a store where Mexicans go. Plus, there’s one other part not mentioned. A lot of underbanked Hispanics go there to cash their paychecks, because they can’t bank anywhere else for various reasons. It’s true.

First Convenience Bank inside Walmart? That bank is known to have a large Hispanic client base who to be frank get suckered into so many fees banking there. They get hit with different ways to nickel and dime clients, I almost want them to bank as Wells Fargo as a refuge.

Mr. Payroll is a place where unbanked people go to cash their hard-earned paychecks or government checks for a fee. It’s frankly a predatory place in my opinion.

It’s funny that one of the grocery stores you can pay your electric bill at for a fee is called La Feria. Feria is Mexican slang for money in some circles, so you will be wasting a lot more of your fucking feria paying your electric bill at the store now.

Like I said earlier, I think these closures are punishing elderly people, people of color, and elderly people of color. No doubt about it. In the interest of saving a couple bucks, you are actually making these people spend more of their money to do business with you. The business of having electricity, which last I checked, is something most people in America have these days. We can’t all be Jesse “The Body” Ventura living off the grid somewhere with our own electric source, though he conveniently has enough juice to be on TV all the goddamn time from his bunker in Parts Unknown.

One final option:

Lastly, EPE accepts payment via the phone from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday or through their mobile app. Both of those methods have fees in the range of $1.95 to $2.35.

Gee thanks. Still got to pay the fee.

The article does note this about “free options” from a checking account:

Utility customers can also arrange a bank draft with EPE via their website. In that system, the utility takes the money directly from utility customers’ bank accounts when the bill is due. There is no fee for this method.

EPE also accepts mailed checks via a stamped envelope to their office in El Paso at El Paso Electric, P.O. Box 982, El Paso, Texas 79960. Other than the envelope and stamp cost, this method has no fee.

So I obviously pay with bank draft. Majority of people do the same thing, of course, but as I mentioned, there are a lot of unbanked folks out here who don’t have the luxury. The accepting of paper check STILL via a P.O. Box is still so old school in my opinion, I thought old Eric would have shitcanned that option.

There’s inherently more risk in a paper check mailed to a P.O. Box if you can believe that. The kiosks and other ways of paying are in fact safer, but it comes at a cost to the consumer. Makes no sense to me. It’s not consistent to the story they are telling us!

So, there is some good news. The 21 employees that were working in these centers were not laid off! There are roles for them within the company, according to EPE. I am happy with that, because it seems like it would have been easy to let them go, but it also puts another question in my brain. Why can’t you just cross-train them to do other shit while keeping them there at the locations to STILL accept payments?

Another tech-geek just “LOL’d” me I am sure.

Note: I had two ex-coworkers immediately work for EPE after being fired for different reasons at Bank of America. It’s been over a decade, so I doubt either one of them still works there.

So, hear me out. That building I showed you a photo of is older than my Dad’s love of the Steve Miller Band. Aside from property taxes, which if they are keeping the property in EPE’s hands, is going to have to be paid anyway, what is the expenses you need to pay to keep it open if the employees aren’t leaving?

Electric bill? You can’t comp yourself a few jigawatts of power, Doc?

(BTW, I know it’s Gigawatts, and that movie pronounced it wrong, but for 40 years now, people are sticking with Jig over Gig)

Maybe a water bill? Internet Bill? Maybe something in the low 5 figures to operate the center still? I don’t know the numbers, but I would venture it is less than the $800 million in revenue you generate annually.

I dunno. It sounds like bullshit to me. Cutting costs is one thing, but take a look at your travel costs to send execs all over the world for business meetings in this, the new world of Zoom meetings, and you can find some nice juicy savings, Sparky.

This is another actual quote:

“By reutilizing those employees, we’re going to be able to do more for our customers than we are today," Heimer said.

I just have no clue what he means by that.

The way the article ends is awesome. Not awesome like a 90s kid would use it, but awesome like a 4-alarm fire that looks like it will never go out. It’s about how one of the superflous spokespeople “understands” the bonds between electric company employee and the clients.

Heimer acknowledged that relationships between customers and EPE representatives at the in-person centers run deep.

“Customers bring (workers) treats and gifts and ask ‘how are your kids’ and things of that nature,” Heimer said. “There’s a big relationship there.”

But, ultimately, Heimer said those workers would have to get used to working with people without seeing them in person.  

LOL. If that statement by Heimer isn’t the literal Webster’s Dictionary definition of “Fuck your Fucking Feelings”, I don’t know what is.

Fuck your treats. Fuck your gifts you get for being good at your job. Fuck your kids. Fuck your “things of that nature”. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL. (I rubbed off the L and the O from the keys after reading that statement)

How the fuck can you say something like that in public? I am sorry for the excessive use of the F word, but homemade biscochitos from a nice grandmotherly figure are not going to be given to great employees this coming Christmas season. I should use it more!

If you follow me and are not from New Mexico, please refer to this wikipedia link. P.S. I spell Biscochitos with an “S” not a “Z” like some people. They are so good.

Dude literally said you are going to have to learn to live without positive reinforcement. I would cry when some clients would be so generous with gifts at the bank, and no I didn’t report cookies to my ethics hotline for advice and counsel on whether chocolate chip cookies are ok, but if they have walnuts, that goes over the allowable gift amount. You think I’m not serious? I got fired from BofA over $4.95.

No personal attacks, James… But I think Robert could stand to eat a couple more Biscochitos, and “things of that nature”.

I am happy for his educational success, but his word salad of a way of trying to cushion the blow of the loss of the relationship between client and employee was filling, mainly because he threw heavy Ranch dressing, a lot of croutons, and some hard boiled eggs in there too. Shitting on those relationships is not cool.

They are just going to HAVE TO get used to that shit, whether they like it or not, right? Ha. I still can’t believe that was said.

I worked in banking for 13 years. I loved my clients. I loved helping my clients. I have been a grandson for 40 years, and hopefully many more years. I love my grandparents and their weird quirky ways of paying their bills. I love that we live in America and have options for almost everything in life.

But what I don’t love? When you tell me you are “helping” people by pushing them away. That 5% of 460,000 people is insignificant to you, but if you filled the local football stadium with that many people, you would have a loud environment that no road team would want to play in. I don’t love that a savings of what is likely not even going to be in the six figures is going to dictate the lives and empty the pocketbooks a little more of the most at-risk people in this area I love so much.

I don’t love that you give a million options, yet all of them charge a fee while telling us that you understand how important that bond was between client and employee, but tough fucking cookies (biscochitos) nonetheless.

It’s crazy, and maybe I shouldn’t be so crazy about this. But I care, and it’s crazy that I care so much. I spent a good chunk of my life learning my grandparents quirks, and the quirks of this community as it pertains to bill paying. A utility company that literally has more mascots than physical places to pay your bill directly with them told you all that you are crazy and people like doing things this way and we will all be better off for it.

This picture only shows 5 of them.. There’s a couple more I believe.

Give me a break.
Imagine if I didn’t park by their building two days ago?

Thanks for indulging in my rant.

-James “The Notorious Banker”