By next month, you won't be able to pay your power bill in person, directly to SaskPower, in Humboldt.SaskPower is closing their Humboldt customer service office to the public effective August 31.That's according to Blair Debruyne, the manager of call centres and collections for SaskPower.While SaskPower service technicians will still be working out of Humboldt, and the SaskPower building on Main St. will remain in use, the storefront will be closed by the time September rolls around. But this won't have a huge effect on people, SaskPower believes. "There are so many other payment options (now).... no one walks in (to SaskPower to pay their bills)," he said."The people of Humboldt, other than those ones who faithfully walked in to pay, shouldn't see a difference (in service)," Debruyne said.The decision to close the customer service office was made based on usage, or lack of it, Debruyne indicated. The services of the office were being used less and less by the public.It just didn't make sense, he said, to have a staff member in the office when so few people were coming in to make their payments.In accordance with SaskPower's policy since about 1996, a review of the usage of the Humboldt office was done in the spring after the full time front office staff member at the location retired."We looked at Humboldt closely," Debruyne said. Once the evaluation was done, the numbers just weren't there to support the hiring of another SaskPower employee, he said. Closing the office now, after their longtime employee has retired, is how they like to do things, he added."That's typically how we try to minimize the impact on people," he said.During the evaluation process, employees from Saskatoon were driving to Humboldt to open the location a few days a week.People have many options when it comes to paying their SaskPower bills, Debruyne noted - through a financial institution, online banking, pre-authorized payments or over the phone, or just by mailing a cheque directly to SaskPower.As for speaking to a SaskPower representative over the phone, since about 2000, through a virtual call centre, SaskPower's 1-888 number has linked customers with any available representative in the province, so no one in Humboldt was guaranteed to speak to the Humboldt office employee anyway.This way, Debruyne explained, they were able to spread out the larger call volumes being experienced by the larger office in Regina and Saskatoon to the smaller ones in rural areas. Nothing will really change in that regard, except there won't be a staff member in Humboldt to pick up the phone.
