As the coronavirus pushes many workers out of the office, and even out of employment, Alaska Electric Light and Power has temporarily suspended late fees and involuntary disconnections.<\/p>\n
“These are challenging times,” said AEL&P vice president Debbie Driscoll in a phone interview. “We know folks are struggling with income loss and potential job loss and we want to help alleviate that if we can.”<\/p>\n
Driscoll said that the company is working with people to spread-load payments so that customers aren’t blindsided by an insurmountable climb when normalcy returns.<\/p>\n
“Our credit department is also working with folks to help folks from falling too far behind,” Driscoll said. “We try to spread the payments out in a way that feels doable to folks.”<\/p>\n
Driscoll encouraged people experiencing financial hardship to contact the company as soon as possible to work out a plan going forward that’s amenable to both parties.<\/p>\n
“Someone will always be here to answer questions,” Driscoll said. “It’s better to talk with us sooner than later.”<\/p>\n
AEL&P is also taking steps to protect its staff from infection as more confirmed cases appear in the Southeast. AEL&P’s lobby is closed, though their drive-thru window is still open, and workers are taking extra pains to decontaminate frequently touched services and to follow the CDC’s best practices as the country deals with the outbreak.<\/p>\n
• Contact reporter Michael S. Lockett at 757.621.1197 or mlockett@juneauempire.com.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The company is looking to ease a fraught time for everyone. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":534,"featured_media":59305,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[703,715,75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-59304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-coronavirus","tag-electricity-power-market","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59304"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=59304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}