Customer confronts Xcel Energy during press conference about power being shut off in neighborhood
During an Xcel Energy press conference on Sunday, a woman in an Englewood neighborhood decided to confront the utility company about power being shut off in her neighborhood.
The neighborhood near E. Layton and S. Lincoln was not part of the preemptive shutoff, which is why on Sunday morning the woman was surprised about having no power in her home, which left her family in a very unpleasant situation.
Fed up and frustrated, Lisa Duvall demanded answers from the utility company.
"I've been on the phone for about half an hour trying to talk to somebody," said Duvall.
She said Xcel Energy did not communicate with her properly about when her power would be out and when it would come back on.
"I got an email at 7:15 a.m. this morning and it was not specific enough just a generic," said Duvall.
She's among many neighbors upset with the fallout of the weekend windstorm and being unable to understand the utility company's outage map.
Xcel Energy's Regional Vice President Hollie Velasquez Horvath says the company learned a lot of lessons during the windstorm, which includes being more specific with its maps.
"Lesson No. 1 for us is that we need to think about how we incorporate an interactive separate map that gives folks, our customers an opportunity to better understand if they were impacted based off of priority and tier," said Velasquez Horvath.
Duvall's power went out Saturday and she did not receive any updates until Sunday morning.
She was without power for more than 17 hours and was afraid her fridge full of food would spoil.
"They just don't care about us people who rent, low income, or Section 8 housing, I don't feel like they think we are a priority to them," said Duvall.
Xcel Energy also says it did not plan to compensate customers for anything they lost during the windstorm.
"This is typically what we treat as a snowstorms that we've got outages for one, two or three days and we don't compensate for anything lost," said Velasquez Horvath.
Xcel Energy says its crews are repairing damage and restoring service to customers, but that will take time. Customers like Duvall just want more transparency.
"Give us a timeline, if it is going to be 10 or 12 hours, say that, we would've made preparations for that," said Duvall.
Xcel Energy also asked customers who did not receive the latest news on outages to update their information.
RELATED: Coloradans without power, may be days before restored
