Author: I thought I would float this out there for your consideration/input. Now I know that this past storm, (Irene) was bad in many areas, but I live in Plymouth Ma. which was not even near the direct path of this downgraded storm. The day before it hit New England, NSTAR left a message on all answering machines about what to do when power was lost, (I guess they somehow knew it was a forgone conclusion) the next day, (Sunday) at exactly 10 AM the power went out. I could not understand why it went out because it was barely windy, it was only lightly raining sporadically. I have been through many Nor’ Easters with really high winds and heavy rain conditions without losing power……really.
At the same time, 10 AM, we lost our Verizon service, in our case it was the land-line phone and computer, these were out for the better part of 5 days, again, why? We tried to contact Verizon to get any idea as to how long this might drag on, with no luck, no one at Verizon would answer their customer service number. We left the cell phone on ‘speaker’ for hours listening to crappy elevator music designed to drive you off the phone while on hold waiting for anyone to answer!
After 35 hours we got electrical power back from NSTAR, jusssst long enough to throw out everything in the refrigerator. I will watch to see if NSTAR reflects that time frame on the bill……. As for Verizon I will watch closely to see if they deduct the five days from their bill. I suggest you do the same. I have a sneaking suspicion that NSTAR will bill everyone for those hours, pure profit for service not rendered. Keep an eye on your bill. Now there is talk another hurricane may be on the way up the coast, lets see how delicate our services are this time around…….
Mark Shean, submitted on 9-4-2011
Posted in Blog