The check is in the mail?
Don’t count on that Mass Save rebate coming anytime soon
Last year, Alice Holt spent tens of thousands of dollars to lower her family’s carbon footprint at their Watertown home.
She replaced their gas stove with an induction stove, which is three times as energy efficient, at a cost of almost $4,000.
She also installed a heat pump, which runs on electricity, not gas or oil.
Holt says she and her family wanted to do their part to combat global warming caused by burning fossil fuels like gas.
And an added incentive was the thousands of dollars in rebates promised by the energy efficiency program Mass Save.
But, like many others, her appreciation of Mass Save is now mixed with frustration over how the program is managed.
It took four months for Mass Save to process her rebate of about $5,400 for the heat pump, about 15 percent of its cost.
Then she was denied a $500 rebate on her new, expensive stove that she was clearly entitled to.
The denial was a mistake, which Mass Save admitted when Holt called to complain. Still, no rebate. She spent six months calling, e-mailing, and writing to Mass Save.
Eventually, Mass Save stopped responding to Holt’s calls and e-mails, and “they summarily discounted my letter which contained all the documentation and fully explained their error,” Holt wrote when she contacted me this month.
Mass Save is managed by Eversource, National Grid, and a few other utilities and paid for by surcharges on customers (you and me). It was created by state law about 15 years ago in the face of the existential threat of climate change. Since then, it has leveraged billions of dollars in private investment in energy efficiency by providing free home energy assessments and lucrative rebates on the kinds of steps taken by Holt.
A couple of days before her new stove was scheduled to be delivered, Holt checked the Mass Save website to see how to get her rebate. The website said anyone who has had a Mass Save technician come to their house for a room-by-room energy assessment in the last year — as Holt had — and who replaced their gas stove was eligible for a $500 rebate.
The website said folks like Holt could get a re--
bate application from the technician who did the assessment.
Holt e-mailed her technician, who asked Holt to send him a picture of her old gas stove before it was removed, which she did. The technician replied that he put the photo in her “project file” and that she should go ahead with her rebate application.
One month later, Holt got a rejection letter from Mass Save saying its records showed she either hadn’t had a home assessment or had been deemed ineligible.
That didn’t make sense. There was no doubt she had the assessment, and her eligibility had never been questioned.
Holt called Mass Save and was assured she was indeed entitled to the rebate. She was told the rejection was a mistake and would be quickly resolved. But nothing happened. She called again a month later. Her rejection was a mistake, she was told again. This time she was promised that an e-mail would be sent to a supervisor and she would get a call back to verify that a rebate check was being processed for her.
But there was no call back, no check, no follow-up of any kind.
For months, Holt repeatedly tried in vain to contact Mass Save. She even filed a consumer complaint with the office of the attorney general. She had lots of company: More than 30 consumers have filed similar complaints in the last year, records show.
Holt thought it might help to file a new application. Maybe a new one would get handled properly. But it got rejected, too.
I brought all this to Mass Save, which operates as a collaborative of the state’s electric and gas utilities and carries out its mission by hiring vendors, including EFI of Marlborough to process rebates.
A day later, Mass Save told me that Holt’s rebate application had been “erroneously denied.” EFI realized its mistake when it was contacted by phone by Holt (twice), but it “never resolved the application internally,” thus blocking the issuance of a check, Mass Save said.
Holt’s rebate application has now been approved and EFI instructed to cut a check, Mass Save said.
I have received half a dozen complaints from readers about Mass Save in the last year. Ken Reale, for example, complained of waiting almost six months before receiving a rebate for the heat pump he installed last year in his East Bridgewater home.
“I definitely was counting on getting that money sooner,” he said. (He belatedly got the check without my involvement.)
In its statement regarding Holt, Mass Save disclosed that, as of July 1, it is replacing EFI with a new vendor, Resource Innovations, a national firm. EFI did not respond to multiple telephone messages from me.
“We understand that energy efficiency upgrades are an investment for our customers, and that rebates are an important part of supporting that process,” Mass Save said in the statement.
Mass Save said it recently experienced a surge in rebate demands. “This demand exceeded what our rebate processing vendor could support. To address that, we engaged a new vendor, and we anticipate … a smoother process and faster turnarounds for customers,” it said.
“The transition won’t happen overnight, and we’re doing everything possible to meet demand and expectations,” it said.
“We apologize for any past delays or inconveniences. We’re committed to doing better for our customers and to helping advance a more energy efficient future,” it said.
Customers who have questions about their rebate can reach Mass Save at info@masssave.com, Mass Save said in the statement, and “will get a reply within two to three business days.”
We’ll see.
Got a problem? Send your consumer issue to sean.murphy@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @spmurphyboston.