Continuing the incompetence, the recent ice storm has left more than 150,000 Ameren UE customers in the dark for days on end for the third time in six months. Look, I know the weather here isn't like in Southern California, but there are people at our church who have lived in Minnesota where the winters are far worse and they have never had to endure such long outages. The system needs to be changed so that we don't lose electricity for days at a time.
Compounding my frustration, Ameren's customer service is sorely lacking. The first time we called and managed to get through to a live person, she was very rude. After telling us that there was "a crew working in your area" she asked for our phone number and then hung up. Why did she want our number? So that when we called back their phone system could identify us and dump our call onto a "there's nothing we can do for you" line with no options to do anything whatsoever.
Ameren's motto is "365. And then some." I'm not sure what the "365" stands for. Some possibilities:
- 365,000 people with no power, and then some.
- 365 dollars a month, and then some.
- 365 hours with no electricity, and then some.
- 365 minutes on hold, and then we hang up on you and blacklist you.
In any event, their website now says that it hopes that the power outage hasn't "inconvenienced" us and that we should be back on by 3:45am tomorrow morning. Barring a light drizzle, anyway.
Update:
And then Ameren's website will tell you that your power is back on, but when you go home everything is still dark. Thanks Ameren!
