I am a Grey Power Electricity customer.
Several weeks ago I was advised by letter of scheduled power
outages on Sunday August 11, Monday August 12 and Monday September 2.
The first two outages took place more or less as scheduled.
As I work from home these were a major inconvenience [for the benefit of blog readers, the power went off at 9am and was supposed to come back on at 3.15pm], but I was prepared to
accept that.
I say “more or less as scheduled” because the outage on
August 12 was supposed to end at 3.15pm but continued until after 6pm, causing
further inconvenience.
Yesterday’s outage was supposed to start at 9am and continue
until 3pm. Accordingly, I made sure that all the work I would normally do on a
Monday was completed during the weekend, which disrupted my normal leisure
time. It was a lovely weekend and I would have preferred to be in the garden.
As it turned out, the outage never happened. I was advised
of this in a phone call that I received at 1.55pm, nearly five hours after the
power was supposed to be turned off.
Needless to say, the call was useless. I had gone to
Palmerston North for the day – not because I needed to, but because it would
have been pointless staying home with no power. In other words, it was a
completely wasted day.
It’s hard to see any explanation for this other than poor
planning and/or incompetence. If the outage was cancelled, why couldn’t
consumers have been advised earlier, when there was still time to re-arrange
commitments for the day?
I write to request two things:
1. An
explanation as to why I wasn’t notified of the cancellation until it was far
too late to be of any use; and
2. An
offer of compensation for the inconvenience caused and time wasted.
Yours sincerely,
Karl du Fresne
It's possible the blame is shared by Powerco, which I believe was doing the work that necessitated the outage, but as the retailer it appears to be the responsibility of Grey Electricity/Pulse to keep customers informed.
