I try not to complain in this blog. Negativity is rarely productive. However, this morning I am really mad.
Our power went out last night at 9:30 pm. It goes out a lot mainly due to the number of large trees in our part of the neighborhood. And, we are used to waiting patiently for power to come back on.
What is different about last night is that I decided to call in the outage because we had an idea of where it started and thought it might help City Light to know where to look. Bad thought.
I started calling 648-7400 shortly after the outage started. After going through the outage list and confirming that our outage had not been reported, I entered my phone number to indicate an outage at my house. The computer then told me I needed to talk to a real person but that their center was closed and I would need to call 706-0051. I called 706-0051 (and 684-7400 a few times just for kicks) until 11:45 pm when I fell asleep. The 706-0051 line always dropped my calls (by cell and by land line) and 684-7400 went dead when I got to the point where I would make a report.
At 3 am I tried 706-0051 again and was directly connected to a real person – at the water line break hotline. I tried again and got the same person again. He did not have any suggestions of other numbers to try.
I called 706-0051 and 684-7400 again at 5 am. No answer. And, I confirmed that our outage was still not showing as reported on the web and on the outage phone line.
At 6 am I finally got through to real person and one who was taking power (not water) outage reports. He had just had a call about our outage from a neighbor – 5 minutes before me.
The power was back on by 9 am.
Should it really take 8.5 hours to report a power outage?
We had the same exact troubles. Called and called but could not get through, could not leave a message, nothing ~ “call back during business hours”. Chalk this one up on the FAILING grade for the mayor and his storm response team. Customers should be able to talk to somebody. Our neighbor finally got through and said that their backup servers were down which is why we could not leave a message with our information.
~ Posted by Neighbor Joe
In the future will it possible to call a friend and have them fax a report?
A friend just sent this link: http://db.tidbits.com/article/9302 It is about a Montlake resident who also could not get through to Seattle City Light at night to report a power outage and was using an iPhone at the same time to check the outage webisite – seeing that that while he got a busy signal, no other outages were being reported.
so how about the street lights that haven’t been replaced after 9 weeks, even though it “may take between 3 day and 8 weeks from when you make the report.” When we called after 8 weeks City Light had lost the original report — we forwarded the email with the receipt of the report we’d made. Aggravating.
Renee,
I just found your post.
It sound's like the phone number you were calling from was not registered on your account information. Unless the number is registered, our automated phone system won't recognize a caller as a customer and you won't be able to report an outage.
We're asking all our customers to update their contact information, which you can do online at https://www.seattle.gov/light/Accounts/cust_info.asp
Sincerely,
Scott Thomsen
Sr. Strategic Advisor, Communications & Public Affairs
Seattle City Light
Scott –
I have been talking with Councilmember Harrell's office and Kelly Enright at City Light since this incident.
Unfortunately, this is still not a great solution. If people do not have their phones registered with you (say they borrow a phone or go to a neighbor's house or get a new cell number) then they can't phone you after hours. I know you are trying, but it is just not satisfactory to me especially since the power goes out in Pinehurst all the time during winter.
Last year's incidents were quite troubling. And, I don't sense that City Light sees any sense of urgency to address this.
Renee