After I wrote here yesterday about my frustrations as a victim of one of the thousands of Xcel Energy outages that we experienced following the storm this past weekend, I received a third email from Xcel advising me of the outage — this one posted at 12:23 p.m. Sunday afternoon. I actually had figured as much when the lights went out at 4:45 a.m. Saturday morning, so this only added to my annoyance:
This email is to alert you that there is an electric outage in your area that may be impacting your [omitted] MN address. Our crews are assessing the situation and we will email you with an update shortly.
You can also get real-time updates and additional resources to monitor your outage with our electric outage map.
Sincerely,
Xcel Energy Customer Care
They actually call it “Customer Care.” That is galling.
Lack of information about an expected restoration time actually played havoc with family plans over the weekend. My annoyance mounted. I repeatedly called Xcel’s customer service line for information. The recording changed, but provided essentially no information. The recording seemed to have been made by someone for whom English was a second language. She couldn’t actually pronounce “outage” correctly, but that was okay. The recording implied that one could reach a representative if one waited on the line following the recording, but the recording was programmed to play in a loop. That was not okay.
Following Xcel’s instructions, I checked its electric outage map online periodically over the weekend. Saturday morning it indicated that 70,000 Twin Cities customers had experienced outages overnight. By Sunday morning the number was down to 15,000, which meant that we were among last in line for restoration. They could have told us that. It would have been useful to know.
Following up on the message above, Xcel sent me two more — the first alerting me at 12:43 p.m. that service would be restored by 10:00 p.m. and the second 50 minutes later advising me that service had been restored. I add these notes just to close the loop and document the “Customer Care” Xcel delivers — pursuing its own monetary green dream as it exploits Minnesota’s (insane) alternative energy green dream.
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