The Homa Files

Last week, a 6-hour heavy snow fall crippled the Metro DC area, causing broadscale electrical power outages.

The utility companies were immediately getting reamed on the talk shows  — though I’m not sure who was listening since the power was out – for making it hard for folks to report outages.

My thought: cut ‘em some slack, the call volume is high.

Then the lights when out at the Homa house, putting a new paint job on the mess.

The transcript:

Thank you for calling Dominion Virginia Power.

To continue in English, press 1.

(In Spanish) To continue in Spanish, press 2.

To make a payment, press 1.

To hear your account balance, press 2.

For other options, press 9.

And on and on.

It took a couple on minutes to get to the option: If your freaking power is off, press 1.

Didn’t those jabrones realize that there was an area power outage going on?

Why didn’t the transaction go like this:

Thank you for calling Dominion Virginia Power.

To report a power out, press 1.

To report a downed power line, press 2.

For any other business call back when the freakin’ snow melts.

Then the company could have simply used its caller ID system to identify the location and say “Thank you for reporting a power outage.  Now, try to stay warm”

I figure the process would have taken a max of 20 seconds.

BTW: Who calls to check their account balance in the middle of a freakin’ snow storm?

This entry was posted on February 2, 2011 at 6:03 am and is filed under Customer Service. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.