sight isn’t always necessary

Here’s an email I wrote to DTE the other day when our power was out, and it was impossible to get ahold of anyone, and I was a little perturbed at our food all going bad:

EVERYWHERE I LOOK, the only phone number I can find for DTE is the silly 4747 number, and EVERY TIME I CALL IT, nobody answers!  We’re given a “this call cannot be completed as dialed” message!  Now, I’m not an expert, but you’d think that the power company that supplies power for MILLIONS of people throughout the state of Michigan would have a FRIGGIN BACKUP PLAN!!!  We’re out of power.  We can manage, of course, but all of our food is going bad, and I’m absolutely certain none of the big wig turds that work for DTE are going to do anything about buying us a refrigerator full of groceries to restock what we’re losing.  I’m also sure they don’t care that we’re hot, that our 3 year old son can’t sleep all night long, and it’s going to be another brutal day as far as humidity goes.  We’re leaving our house, we’re going to find other things to do, and it’s all we can do to hope that our cats can manage in the heat of a closed up house.  If I could, I’d take all of my rotten food and throw it at someone’s house that I KNOW is not working fast enough to AT LEAST provide a phone number, or a working website, so that we can be assured that our complaints are being heard.

The website won’t work either.  I keep getting fatal errors SIMPLY when trying to see if there’s ANY progress getting our house back online.

PLEASE RESPOND, if there’s ANYONE at DTE with any kind of dedication at ALL to customer service.  At least let me know that you’re not sitting in your air conditioned houses watching the rest of us fan ourselves with what paper we can find in the dark.

So, they wrote back today.  And I think their answer is funny.  I should go through the claims report to get some money back for lost food, I think it would be fun to go buy $20 of groceries on DTE’s bill.

Dear Elizabeth Beckman:

We apologize for the inconvenience with our website and the phone lines.

It was extremely unfortunate we did not have a back up to the phone system. We worked expeditiously with the phone company to get the phone lines back up.

We also are working hard, around the clock, to get all our customers restored.

We will send you a claims form to report any loss of food.

We value your input and your e-mail has been forwarded to management for review, to help make improvements with future catastrophic outages.

Our records indicate your service was restored on 6-9, approximately 2:43 PM.

Thank you for using my.dteenergy.com.

Sincerely,

DTE Energy Internet Team