Last week we lost power. The outage lasted just over four hours and was inconvenient rather than catastrophic, but it reminded me of the multi-day outages resulting from the October snowfall in 2011 and Superstorm Sandy in 2012. While customers must show patience, the frustration might be less if the power companies provided timely, accurate information about the cause of the outage, and, more importantly, the projected repair time.
Once the outage was reported to the power company, I received an e-mail (at 4:46 p.m.) advising that the estimated restoration time for the outage had been updated to 7:30 p.m. The three-hour estimate of time to repair seemed to me a bit arbitrary as the outage had only recently been reported to the company and, according to the e-mail the cause was “pending investigation,” and the crew status was “awaiting dispatch.” Two and one-half hours later, at 7:17 p.m., the estimated repair time was updated to 9:30 p.m. The cause remained “pending investigation,” and the crew was still “awaiting dispatch.” Power was actually restored at 8:00 p.m., and I was notified of that restoration by a final e-mail at 8:26 p.m.
If you’re trying to make a rational decision about what to do in the event of a power outage, you really need to have an idea but how long the outage will last. An hour or so you can ride out; days and days may require giving thought to temporary alternative living arrangements. In my case the question was whether to drag out the generator so the well pump would work and string extension cords to power a refrigerator or two. (I decided to let it go overnight but set an early alarm in case the power was still out in the morning.)
The power company may not have a to-the-minute answer to the question of when the lights will come back on, but I have to believe that it has better information than it was providing. If you call customer service, you are likely to get a person whose answer is scripted to sound sincere but is no more informative. Being told that they are working as fast as they can and that power will be restored “soon” is not helpful in making decisions.
I get that the customer service representatives probably don’t want to have to deal with angry customers who are told that no one will get to their neighborhood for days, but customers need this information.
Jay Bohn
October 13, 2022
Post script
Last night, the same day this post went live, we had another power outage which lasted from (approximately) 7:00 pm to 5:30 am today. Here are the estimated repair times.
| e-mail time | estimated repair time | cause | crew status |
| 7:32 p.m. | 10:00 p.m. | pending investigation | awaiting dispatch |
| 11:57 p.m. | 2: a.m. | equipment damage | additional crews requested |
| 2:06 a.m. | 4:00 a.m. | equipment damage | additional crews requested |
Again, my issue is not how long it actually took, but the lack of accurate information.
J.B.B.
October 14, 2022