NStar to waiters, small businesses: Suck it

NStar ain't worried about the customers departing- no choice! And Thomas May isn't worried about the customers, he's worried about his shareholders. Shareholders don't care about the customers, unless they happen to also be customers- which probably some small percentage are. As customers, we can't vote May out like we can Menino, though the shareholders of NStar can. Which they would only do if NStar lost money, say by compensating customers harmed by blackouts.

So NStar and May have no incentive whatsoever to do well by their customers, and customers have no alternative in the "free market".
Muchos problemas. Very troubling.

Over the last decade the feeder that goes down our street failed every year or two. The cable was beyond the end of its useful life, so when the spring melts came, the ground would get soaked and the cable would short.

The shorting was intermittent, varying the voltage wildly into our homes, damaging electronic equipment, until the shorting section of the cable finally failed—sometimes spectacularly with flames coming up three two four feet out of the ground.

Nstar would come, eventually, dig the street, replace just the failed section of cable, throw down some poor cold patch and then leave to wait for the next failure.

Simply replacing the entire cable (as they eventually had to do) would have eaten into their profits, so they waited as long as they could before doing the right thing.

Wanna bet exactly the same deferred capital improvements policy caused the fire and subsequent, long-duration outage in the Back Bay?

Why does Nstar owe anything to people who didn't have electricity? I've not read over my service agreement, but I'm pretty sure they don't have to guarantee service. Even when electricity is run to your home, you only pay for what you use. No electricity used that month, then you get a very small, almost nothing bill. Lots of electricity used that month, then big bill for lots of money. If these businesses who all lost electricity get billed for the days they were shutoff, then I see reason for extreme fury, chances are they won't be billed since they used virtually no electricity.

I worked in a restaurant a long time ago, and don't know how modern restaurant kitchens work. The ones I worked in used gas to fire all of the cooking equipment. It's also possible to process transactions using a calculator, and cash. I'm wondering why some places weren't able to stay open if they were only selling merchandise, and cooking foods which don't spoil as a result of not being refrigerated. The restaurant I worked at did lose power one night, and we ended up putting candles at the tables for people to see what they were doing. While it is a bit more of a fire hazard, it did make the whole crew pay more attention to what they were doing.

I've been listening to the right belittle President Obama for trying to embrace green energy. Too bad none of those idiots live in the Back Bay. Just another example of how we all pay for our aging, seemingly ignored infrastructure. There are more important things to pay for!

Like throwing women and the sick back into the Dark Ages!

Failure to properly maintain a critical link in the electrical infrastructure along with failure to provide reasonable back-up redundancies in the event of the critical link fails is considered a "normal event"? I wonder how long I would last at my job if I used such an excuse when I made mistakes.

It seems that as the utility companies grow larger their responsiveness to customers decreases. The impending merger of NStar and Northeast Utilities will only worsen the problem. The executives of these companies are not saints who smile lovingly upon the people who depend on them. They merely are slaves to the lust for control and wealth that is purpose of monopolized economics.

A company that is a cash cow can afford to provide top notch services by maintaining equipment, using backup designs that prevent the destruction of primary and backup equipment as well as simpler things such as providing customer service beyond 5:00 (electricity is a 24 hour service - the company should provide 24 hour responsiveness beyond emergencies).

My experience with NStar does not leave me hopeful. I signed up for their energy saving pilot program. But the equipment they provided was poorly designed and their agreement to charge rates that are part of the pilot was never honored. Several attempts asking their billing folks to correct this resulted in plenty of "we will fix it" commitments followed by inaction every time.

What message do I hear from the electric company: to paraphrase
Ernestine channeled by the Ms. Tomlin, "We don't care; we don't have to. We're the electric company."

Monopolies are bad. Whether as a telephone company, electric company, cable, internet or gas company.

Because honestly, if the transformer that blew was on the hotel's property or was maintained by some other entity other than Nstar, that's where the case is going to need to be made. If it was not Nstar who owned or maintained the transformer, then well, time for the business owners(and anyone else) who feel put out by the outage to knock on the proper door.

He seems pretty quiet all of a sudden.