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Still waiting to hear how long you've been without power Ms. Mills.

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BGE Customer,

Earlier this week, I arrived home from to find a large amount of debris and tree damage in my neighborhood, as well as no power. Many of my friends and relatives, as well as BGE employees have been without power this past week. We can understand the true hardship and discomfort this has been on families. We also talked with customers who have weathered the outage and all of the frustrations and difficulty brought on by this severe impact storm. Extended outages are hard on everyone who experiences them, especially coupled with the extreme heat wave. We know that patience wears thin. Thank you for your ongoing feedback, patience and understanding through the continued recovery.

From Jeanette's reply to my 7/3 post:
"We appreciate your feedback and understand your frustration."

You seriously think you UNDERSTAND our frustration? Unless you and the rest of the BGE PR and management team have been spending 12 or more hours a day inside an 85-95 degree home for the past SIX days, unable to find any relief from the oppressive heat, none of you can truly understand the frustration. Sleep, when it comes is fitful and uncomfortable. Cushions on ceramic tile and basement floors are poor substitutes for a bed. Watching your family and pets suffer is heart-breaking. Experiencing the daily deteriorating levels of personal and home hygiene coupled with the dietary changes forced upon us by lack of refrigeration is more than unpleasant. “We're sorry for your discomfort” would have been a more appropriate reply. Continually reminding customers about the difficult outdoor working conditions faced by restoration teams is insulting to the majority of BGE customers who recognize THOSE particular jobs are not easy and do appreciate their efforts. What we don't appreciate or understand is the attitude and behavior of those at the helm. How about we hear from some top BGE executives who have also been without power for six days? Their personal narratives, if they exist, would be more heartening than the useless PR chatter that is regurgitated over and over again on this blog and in the media. BGE leadership really doesn't seem to have a clue as to what the public really wants; reliable, affordable energy, exceptional, transparent customer service, the willingness to admit to and apologize for any shortcomings, and to provide situationally appropriate restitution on the next billing statement. While you may not be able to provide a useful answer to those who have inquired about the impact such a long term outage will have on their next bill, I can tell them from my own personal experiences, that going a week without power makes little to no difference in the amount you typically will owe BGE.

BY THE WAY, THANKS EVER SO MUCH FOR NOT CONFIRMING OR DENYING MY COMMENT REGARDING THE OUTAGE MAP IN MY 7/3 POST. I would like to know if the color dot represented on the map reflects the total number of customers in that given area experiencing an outage or only the number of customers in that area who reported an outage? Let me remind you that as of this morning there were 100+ homes in my development without power yet the light purple dot on the map indicates only 1-15 customers affected. SOMETHING IS SERIOUSLY WRONG HERE! Our HOA needs to know so we can educate neighbors and make sure we are not under reported and therefore a continual low restoration priority. Rest assured that once power is restored, I'll consider it a temporary fix until the next extended outage because I really don't expect BGE to ever change for the better.

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Tanya,

We are sorry for your discomfort. We do know that this has been very hard on customers who have been without power as a result of the extensive damages caused by this severe impact storm. Many BGE families live in the service territory and are with out power and water - so can completely understand the true hardship this has been on families. We want more than anything to restore everyone's power as soon as possible.

Housing developments may be served by multiple feeder lines so your entire development may not be out. We do require customers to report outages and not assume we know about an outage, but once they have been reported, customers do not need to call it in again.

Regarding the outage map question - each dot represents a job. The dot is located where the device that operated (or was predicted to have operated) which could be more than a mile from any given customer affected by that job. The size/color of the dot reflects how many customers affected by the job and is unaffected by the number of calls on the job.

Just noticed that BGE picked up about 20k new outages with this evening's storms. Will be interested to see if they restore those of us who've been out since last Friday evening before attacking these new outages. Given their callous attitude toward providing any useful information after a week, nothing would surprise me

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Still in the dark,

We will continue to aggressively restore service to the remaining four percent of the more than 725,000 customers – nearly the amount affected during Hurricane Irene – who have experienced power outages since last Friday’s severe weather system. In addition, the company will also work to restore service to customers who may have experienced outages last evening due to storms or heat- related issues; however, restoration of these new outages may be delayed due to the company’s continued priority focus on outages related to last Friday’s storm activity.

I am very sympathetic to the task of restoring power to so many users, but we are now closing in on a full seven day outage. We hosted our daughter's wedding last weekend without power with no complaints. Howwever, I run my business our of my home, as does my wife, and our business is being seriously impacted by BGE's failure to restore our power. We are also distressed that our power goes out during most bad weather and because we only have about ten houses on our street, we are always one of the last to be restored.

For the last four days your automated system has said we would be restored by the end of that day, yet it now says by tomorrow evening. How can I depend upon your service to run my business and live comfortably?

Very disappointing.....

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John,

First of all, please extend our congratulations to your daughter and thanks to you and your family for your extreme patience and understanding as we work through the final restorations following this severe storm. We are very sorry that this caused what must have been a great inconvenience. Our restoration strategy requires that we make the repairs that return the largest number of customers to service, in addition to our main lines and public safety facilities. If we did not follow this strategy, outages would extend even longer. We do give consideration to customers who have been out the longest, but even so, with this volume of outages, this still means some customers will have been out as long as you have or longer. We appreciate that you clearly understand this. The estimated restoration time is another matter, and we apologize that shifting and missed estimates compounded the frustration and inconvenience. We have attempted to be very cautious with providing restoration estimates during this recovery because the extensive damage can take longer to repair than initial assessments indicated. Unfortunately, you received inaccurate information and this should not have happened. We continue to explore better processes and solutions for delivering accurate restoration estimates. Finally, as to your longer term power reliability issues, please contact us via email at myhomerep@bge.com with your account information, location and contact information. Reference this blog post and please detail the issues. We can then work with you to investigate your situation further and determine what improvements can or should be made. Thank you.

You STILL haven't restored power to the Amish but they aren't crying about it.