In an effort to burnish its image, Central Maine Power has become more active in responding to power outages and in informing customers about the progress it is making to restore power. It is much less successful in dealing with clear threats to power lines before outages occur.

If a threat to power lines is reported, it may take weeks for anyone in the company to even look at the problem and more weeks after that to resolve it. In the meantime, it is almost impossible to get any feedback about what the company is prepared to do to address a threat, or when it will act, and the company’s customer service reps have little more information than customers do about resolution schedules.

It is a strange performance model, but apparently CMP would prefer to repair downed power lines than to address threats before outages occur. This model may make sense to the company, but not to customers who suffer preventable outages and don’t know if the company is going to act or when.

These aren’t the only reasons, but the slow response to power line threats and miserable communications about intentions and schedules are two of the reasons why many CMP customers would prefer a different ownership and management.

Martin Jones
Freeport