Jan 5, 2009 10:40 pm US/Eastern
Unitil Takes Out Full Page Ad To Say Sorry
BOSTON (WBZ) ―
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The Dec. 12 ice storm downed power lines throughout central and western Massachusetts.
Tyner Lawrence/WBZ
Even if they're warm in their homes, a lot of customers want to stop doing business with their power company.
They're still angry about the Unitil's response after last month's ice storm.
On Monday, the company took out a full page ad in the Boston Globe to apologize, but was it enough?
Unitil's CEO Robert Schoenberger said his company did the best they could, and doesn't know why he's being singled out.
Hundreds of his customers are saying Unitil's best wasn't in the vicinity of being enough. Now Schoenberger is being singled out because of how long it took to get power back to customers left in the dark.
Unitil's full page ad in the Globe read "This was the worst and most damaging ice storm we have ever seen. Four percent of our customers were out for as many as 12 days… we sincerely apologize."
"We wanted to tell our employees, our customers how bad we felt," said Schoenberger.
But the apology may be too little, too late for some.
More than 2,000 of Unitil's customers have now signed a petition to get rid of the utility company because they say there was not only no power, but when it came to communication, they were also left in the dark. "They were being told you'll be restored tomorrow and it never happened, you'll be restored tomorrow didn't happen...that's bad communication," said WBZ's Jonathan Elias.
"Let's put it this way," explained Schoenberger. "Every utility that dealt with this storm had communication issues."
Not enough resources, longer repair times and not enough workers are some of the reasons Unitil offered as to why it took them so long to restore power.
Schoenberger also pointed out it was only 6,800 of their 170,000 customers that waited 12 days. "Who cares if it was four customers," said Elias. "If I'm looking to you to rely on for power and I don't get it I don't care if it's one family or one guy and a dog."
"I understand that," responded Schoenberger, "But if you look at the system-wide event, we had it impact all our utilities in the region. I would stack ours up against all of them."
Schoenberger says his company was no different than other utilities when it came to restoring power.
But the largest provider, National Grid, told WBZ they had all their customers back online in six days – half the time it took Unitil.
Unitil is one of the smallest power providers in New England and the most expensive.
The state is planning a formal investigation into why it took so long for Unitil to restore power to all its customers.
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