So, an update from my last post where I started my rant about the staggering incompetence demonstrated by PSNH (Public Service of New Hampshire). I’ll break things down in bullet points for everyone who might be following this. Full disclosure: I finally had my electricity restored last Friday afternoon, 7.5 days after the first outage. So, with no further ado…

  1. My original post on PSNH’s incompetence ran last Tuesday, 12/16. I had been without power for 3.5 days. I posted in the morning, and by day’s end I discovered that PSNH was now posting a town-by-town spreadsheet that indicated when power would be restored to 95% of each town’s residents. This was, in my opinion, progress, although I was under no illusion that it was in response to my post…
  2. A careful reading of the spreadsheet produced two salient bits of information. First, there were several towns listed where PSNH still refused to provide an estimate of when power would be restored. Second, as I thought about, saying that power would be restored to 95% of a town’s residents was a huge hedge on PSNH’s part. In many cases, power was already available to 75, 80, or 90% of the population; not like they were setting any stretch goals now was it? If they were really interested in communicating with their customers, they would have provided 100% estimates for every town, along with an idea about what work was being accomplished. Londonderry, the town where I live, was scheduled to be at 95% restoration by midnight Wednesday, 12/17.
  3. The spreadsheet is only updated once a day. Usually in the morning there’s an update via Twitter. I’m sure that people without power, and therefore without access to the internet were extremely heartened by PSNH’s awesome Twitter presence.
  4. Thursday morning, still no power. I call PSNH customer service and am told they missed their 95% goal for Londonderry, and no, there was no more information available. I ask to speak to a supervisor, and am told that someone will call be back after 9:00 a.m. on my cell phone.
  5. 10:00 a.m. Thursday, I get a call from a very nice woman (and I’ll curse myself forever for not getting her name). She proceeds to inform me that my electricity should be restored by the time I get home from work that evening. I’m truly heartened, but cautious as well.
  6. 5:30 p.m. Thursday, I return from work to a dark, cold house – clearly no power has been restored. Proceed to call PSNH customer service again and explain what I’d been told. The customer service representatives seem more interested in who had told me I’d have power back by evening than in helping me figure out why indeed my power was still not on. I get a supervisor callback late that evening, and am told that, while PSNH has Project Managers in the field, the customer service people have no way of talking to them. When I (quite naturally) inquired as to whether or not I might speak with one of these omnipotent project managers, I was told that wasn’t possible. Oh, and the second person I spoke to that evening was incredibly rude. Finally, Thursday also heralds the publication of the next spreadsheet of restoration deadlines. Londonderry has now moved from midnight Wednesday, to midnight on Friday, the 19th. Again, this is for 95% restoration, which as we’ve already discussed, is complete bullshit.
  7. Friday morning, still no power. I’ve taken a day off from work so that I can prepare for a coming snowstorm. I go to the gym, get a shower, then head to the laundromat to catch up on 7 days of dirty clothes. There I meet countless other people from towns all over southern NH. All of them have had similar experiences with PSNH, and all of them are angry and frustrated. Later that morning, almost noon, I’m standing in the checkout line at the store getting batteries, firewood, water, etc. – my wife phones me and tells me that finally power is restored. Later that evening I get a call from PSNH customer service. Very surly, one question – “Do you have power?” – after I answered in the affirmative he hung up!

So, again I’m awestruck at the incompetence demonstrated by PSNH over the last few days. People are still without power, and nobody seems to know anything. I think the thing that bothers me most is the fact that they seem to be getting a free pass in the media. If the republican administration had bollocks-ed things up this badly they’d have been pilloried to hell and beyond. I had written in the previous post about how I thought the line workers/crews were the heroes of this event; I’ve since come to think a bit differently based on 2 things I heard over the last 4 days:

  1. (Unconfirmed) – From a co-worker who knows a linesman in Vermont. This fellow was asked to come to NH to assist in the restoration (massive) effort after the storm. He politely declined. His reason? He indicated that about 3 years back we had another multi-day outage due to an ice storm. Apparently, the guest work crews were (his words) treated like shit by the PSNH crews. Seems they wanted the overtime for themselves. I’m still willing to give ’em the benefit of the doubt, but if there’s a shred of truth to this, they’re greedy, malicious, selfish, bastards and I hope they die slowly of syphilis after going insane.
  2. (Confirmed) – I was at a local restaurant (99 in Londonderry) this weekend getting some lunch with my wife. One of the employees (who shall remain nameless) indicated that the last week, during the height of the outage, a PSNH line crew came in after they had completed their shift. Apparently PSNH has a contract with 99 and the crews eat for free. Seems they spent 2 hours, in the bar, before they were assailed by angry townspeople who were (hard to imagine) incensed to find them there eating and drinking while they suffered with no heat, water, or other basic civilized luxuries. Now, here’s my point… Apparently, the crew had come off a 16-hour shift. So fine, get your damn lunch and return to your tent or hotel or wherever the hell it is your staying. Do not sit for two hours enjoying yourselves and unwinding in front of people you’re supposed to be helping. Perhaps some behavioral training in basic customer service is required.

Other items of interest for those of you who may be following this:

  1. Seems like during Saturday’s snowstorm, some idiot in Manchester wiped out a utility pole that resulted in (God forbid, it’s Manchester) an outage to approximately 4000 people. Despite the fact that other residents had been without power for going on 10 days, PSNH dispatched crews to fix the Manchester outage. Seems to me that they should have gone to the back of the list, but what do I know, it had only been 10 days!
  2. Heard the Londonderry town council called a meeting to address the concerns of angry townspeople with the response and communications to that point by PSNH. I don’t know that I’ve ever witnessed a more credible demonstration of poor leadership than what was on display by the Londonderry town manager. What an ass. I couldn’t recognize him because his entire body seemed to be stuck up the ass of PSNH – sounded like his voice was coming from an echo chamber. He proceeded to articulate (shill for) the PSNH talking points (this circuit serves this area, has 140 separate problems, blah…blah…blah) and in short did absolutely nothing to bring relief to his constituents. Maybe he’s got a job waiting for him when he leaves public service.

Last point – I finally heard this morning that the state utility commission will be launching an investigation into the communications practices of PSNH during this colossal cluster-f*ck. I can only hope and pray that they’re fined to the point where they lose all income for this year. At least we can hope that bonuses are rescinded. Let’s also hope that at some point one of these mythical project managers emerges to chat about how these things are managed, although in the end, I suspect we’ll find they’re about as real as their cousins – you know- unicorns and mermaids.