While I am waiting for CL&P to return my call, wait time today is 20 minutes, I will post my current concern regarding my invoice for the billing period Oct 7 – Nov 7. I was charged more and got less, in other words, I was without power for 7 days and yet my bill is higher than the previous month. Are the charges to customers a vehicle to begin paying for the legal costs/battles they have?
The first thing that is needed is a review by as impartial of a team as possible as to the real reasons behind the lengthy restoration time for this and Irene – what could have been done better – better preparation, more crews, more communications between the electrical crews and the public works ppl who needed to cut down trees, etc.
First of all electric companies (and goes for other utilities that people rely on to live) should not be allowed to trade on the stock market, one reason for high prices dues to making sure the share holder is happy. second cl&p did not pay their contractors for the last storm, and like any other company they passed over CT and went on to the other states that do pay. Dont let the execs at cl&p twist and mangle the story and make you look some where else. The entire board of cl&p should be tossed and let ConEd come take over management. Such a joke of all the excuses I have seen protecting a misfit management for a company.
How many years has CL&P had to bury the wires and prune the trees…My parents moved into their new home in 1964 and power outages were a weekly event, so, let’s fast forward to, 2011, where excuses, should simply and clearly, not exist…However, when my mother of 86 years, has to suffer through the very cold temperatures with the danger of, lit candles, kerosene lamps, and all of the dangers those present, especially at night, when she becomes sleepy and not quite, in the cognizant state of mind, that is needed to protect one’s self from all the dangers of those objects…My anger was great and certainly targeted at the CEO of CL&P and of course not the working man and woman, who faces the horrific dangers of losing their lives, every time that bucket takes them up to another pole…I admire all of them, very much…But not the CEO and others at or around his level, who care only about the almighty dollar…You disgust me and if I am able, I would like to bring a class-action suit against you and all concerned, who should be held responsible for this debacle, over and over and over again…No woman or man, in their golden years, should have to suffer through this nonsense of not caring and having to face, yet another outage, when the wind blows…or ice falls from the sky…None of this is not new so,CL&P, when are you going to care…???…When will you do something that matters, instead of keeping your stock holders happy…???
If we are going to start blaming people let’s start at the source, god or mother nature whatever you choose to believe in. Not much the power co can do when it comes to that. What cl&p did wrong was set such an early restoration date. It took what seven, eight days to restore after irene, this storm caused five times the damage, you do the math. Its very easy for people on the outside looking in to think tht thy know what goes into this type of restoration effort but they have no idea. And instead of leaving these people alone who are only trying to help restore power who have lack of sleep and have been away from their families this entire time, they are getting harrassed, assaulted and threatened. As far as invoices, irene happened two months ago, co have 90 days to pay bills. If you receive a bill eight inches thick for millions of dollars are you going to just pay it? No you are going to go through it with a fine tooth comb. You know who should be held accountable? Thomas edison. if it wasn’t for him the world would not be full of wussies who can no longer seem to function without electricity like they were able to do not that long ago.
There’s no excuse that can be made for CL&P. This is the deregulated power industry they pushed through and resulted in huge increases in rates. A choice of generator companies helps, but CL&P charges for delivery are more per KWH than my entire charge at a second home in another state.
And that’s a rural area where customers are a half mile to a mile apart on narrow tree-lined roads. The old investor-owned company gouged us for years and then as part of their “rationalization” gave up much of their service area to an electric cooperative with a great reputation they’ve lived up to and more. Their rates are about the same, low, but their service is superior. Our increasingly common 1 and 2 week outages are gone. They’ve reduced my bill to eliminate minimum bill requirements for an unused meter that was supposed to end 15 years ago.
One question that hasn’t been asked is who decided that utilities could compete to see who could overload existing power poles the most. The wires sometimes broke before, but we rarely lost poles. A single tree behind our house took out two poles. The power line snapped, but all that super heavy cable didn’t budget so the poles fell. The answer to the six families who lived on that road was “You’re not very significant in our scheme of things.” They were without power five days before the tree could even be cut and removed from the road.
Irene was the last straw for many of us. The crews worked hard, but they were also denied overtime in most cases and the around the clock effort wasn’t there. This is called maximizing profit, one reason they’ve cut into linemen’s jobs and pay.
What most of us have done is pay the big ticket for full time power backup generators, propane installation (we don’t have Nat Gas because Yankee owns the territory and isn’t compelled to provide service).
I can’t find fault with Governor Malloy or the Stamford government. They’re all as frustrated as we are, fed up.
As for trees, the power company is supposed to maintain its right of way. If you notify them, they will do nothing. We took down some very expensive to remove trees on our property because they were not sound and threatened our neighbor’s lines. The power company never responds to calls. Power line rights of way at our second home were kept clear rigorously by even the old company and now the Co-op. We also saw the Power company here replacing lines and transformers with different wires and smaller transformers. We were told the crews had to do that because CL&P has dramatically lowered its inventory of equipment needed in event of a major outage.
It will happen again and keep happening until a change is made in the ownership and management of CL&P.
I think C L & P as well as Governor Malloy should be held accountable for the poor handling of the Nor’easter’s crisis from last week. We should be credited and compensated for it and not be charged in due of it. Sandy
This storm has proven why capitalism is so important. When the state allows a company like CL&P to monopolise an entire state and service they are not held to standards are companies are. How many of us who were without service for 4,5,6 days or still without power, would not be quickly changing to another company for our electrical needs. Not only has this been a huge debacle at best, the company really has no one to answer to. What is our options as consumers? We all need power and there is no where else to go. As much as I blame the “big”guys as CL&P, (not the working class workers who have been working their asses off) I also blame our towns and governer, who by cutting budgets everywhere, have failed to trim trees and make it safter on our road. Why were these trees trimmed the three days leading up to the storm. We all knew it was coming. Maybe we didn’t know the to what extent the damage was going to be, but the weather channels warned us repeatedly that there would likely be outages and downed trees and wires. The towns should have immediately stepped up their responsibility and started getting ready for the storm. Trees should have been trimmed, wires and poles checked. CL&P should have made sure all their invoices were paid. How can a company, who will shut you off in a heart beat for owing 200, think it is acceptable to owe another company $600,000 from Irene, months later. The governer better take a very close look at what is going on in his state and make some serious changes…just saying
I think the Gov should step down or be impeached….He is useless
They have to apply to state regulators for rate-related billing hikes.
While I am waiting for CL&P to return my call, wait time today is 20 minutes, I will post my current concern regarding my invoice for the billing period Oct 7 – Nov 7. I was charged more and got less, in other words, I was without power for 7 days and yet my bill is higher than the previous month. Are the charges to customers a vehicle to begin paying for the legal costs/battles they have?
The first thing that is needed is a review by as impartial of a team as possible as to the real reasons behind the lengthy restoration time for this and Irene – what could have been done better – better preparation, more crews, more communications between the electrical crews and the public works ppl who needed to cut down trees, etc.
First of all electric companies (and goes for other utilities that people rely on to live) should not be allowed to trade on the stock market, one reason for high prices dues to making sure the share holder is happy. second cl&p did not pay their contractors for the last storm, and like any other company they passed over CT and went on to the other states that do pay. Dont let the execs at cl&p twist and mangle the story and make you look some where else. The entire board of cl&p should be tossed and let ConEd come take over management. Such a joke of all the excuses I have seen protecting a misfit management for a company.
How many years has CL&P had to bury the wires and prune the trees…My parents moved into their new home in 1964 and power outages were a weekly event, so, let’s fast forward to, 2011, where excuses, should simply and clearly, not exist…However, when my mother of 86 years, has to suffer through the very cold temperatures with the danger of, lit candles, kerosene lamps, and all of the dangers those present, especially at night, when she becomes sleepy and not quite, in the cognizant state of mind, that is needed to protect one’s self from all the dangers of those objects…My anger was great and certainly targeted at the CEO of CL&P and of course not the working man and woman, who faces the horrific dangers of losing their lives, every time that bucket takes them up to another pole…I admire all of them, very much…But not the CEO and others at or around his level, who care only about the almighty dollar…You disgust me and if I am able, I would like to bring a class-action suit against you and all concerned, who should be held responsible for this debacle, over and over and over again…No woman or man, in their golden years, should have to suffer through this nonsense of not caring and having to face, yet another outage, when the wind blows…or ice falls from the sky…None of this is not new so,CL&P, when are you going to care…???…When will you do something that matters, instead of keeping your stock holders happy…???
If we are going to start blaming people let’s start at the source, god or mother nature whatever you choose to believe in. Not much the power co can do when it comes to that. What cl&p did wrong was set such an early restoration date. It took what seven, eight days to restore after irene, this storm caused five times the damage, you do the math. Its very easy for people on the outside looking in to think tht thy know what goes into this type of restoration effort but they have no idea. And instead of leaving these people alone who are only trying to help restore power who have lack of sleep and have been away from their families this entire time, they are getting harrassed, assaulted and threatened. As far as invoices, irene happened two months ago, co have 90 days to pay bills. If you receive a bill eight inches thick for millions of dollars are you going to just pay it? No you are going to go through it with a fine tooth comb. You know who should be held accountable? Thomas edison. if it wasn’t for him the world would not be full of wussies who can no longer seem to function without electricity like they were able to do not that long ago.
There’s no excuse that can be made for CL&P. This is the deregulated power industry they pushed through and resulted in huge increases in rates. A choice of generator companies helps, but CL&P charges for delivery are more per KWH than my entire charge at a second home in another state.
And that’s a rural area where customers are a half mile to a mile apart on narrow tree-lined roads. The old investor-owned company gouged us for years and then as part of their “rationalization” gave up much of their service area to an electric cooperative with a great reputation they’ve lived up to and more. Their rates are about the same, low, but their service is superior. Our increasingly common 1 and 2 week outages are gone. They’ve reduced my bill to eliminate minimum bill requirements for an unused meter that was supposed to end 15 years ago.
One question that hasn’t been asked is who decided that utilities could compete to see who could overload existing power poles the most. The wires sometimes broke before, but we rarely lost poles. A single tree behind our house took out two poles. The power line snapped, but all that super heavy cable didn’t budget so the poles fell. The answer to the six families who lived on that road was “You’re not very significant in our scheme of things.” They were without power five days before the tree could even be cut and removed from the road.
Irene was the last straw for many of us. The crews worked hard, but they were also denied overtime in most cases and the around the clock effort wasn’t there. This is called maximizing profit, one reason they’ve cut into linemen’s jobs and pay.
What most of us have done is pay the big ticket for full time power backup generators, propane installation (we don’t have Nat Gas because Yankee owns the territory and isn’t compelled to provide service).
I can’t find fault with Governor Malloy or the Stamford government. They’re all as frustrated as we are, fed up.
As for trees, the power company is supposed to maintain its right of way. If you notify them, they will do nothing. We took down some very expensive to remove trees on our property because they were not sound and threatened our neighbor’s lines. The power company never responds to calls. Power line rights of way at our second home were kept clear rigorously by even the old company and now the Co-op. We also saw the Power company here replacing lines and transformers with different wires and smaller transformers. We were told the crews had to do that because CL&P has dramatically lowered its inventory of equipment needed in event of a major outage.
It will happen again and keep happening until a change is made in the ownership and management of CL&P.
I think C L & P as well as Governor Malloy should be held accountable for the poor handling of the Nor’easter’s crisis from last week. We should be credited and compensated for it and not be charged in due of it. Sandy
This storm has proven why capitalism is so important. When the state allows a company like CL&P to monopolise an entire state and service they are not held to standards are companies are. How many of us who were without service for 4,5,6 days or still without power, would not be quickly changing to another company for our electrical needs. Not only has this been a huge debacle at best, the company really has no one to answer to. What is our options as consumers? We all need power and there is no where else to go. As much as I blame the “big”guys as CL&P, (not the working class workers who have been working their asses off) I also blame our towns and governer, who by cutting budgets everywhere, have failed to trim trees and make it safter on our road. Why were these trees trimmed the three days leading up to the storm. We all knew it was coming. Maybe we didn’t know the to what extent the damage was going to be, but the weather channels warned us repeatedly that there would likely be outages and downed trees and wires. The towns should have immediately stepped up their responsibility and started getting ready for the storm. Trees should have been trimmed, wires and poles checked. CL&P should have made sure all their invoices were paid. How can a company, who will shut you off in a heart beat for owing 200, think it is acceptable to owe another company $600,000 from Irene, months later. The governer better take a very close look at what is going on in his state and make some serious changes…just saying