March 16, 2017, - 6:39 pm
Almost a Week Without Power in Detroit: When Your Utility is a Monopoly w No Competition
On this site and elsewhere, I’ve always preached the virtues of competition. I oppose monopolies, whether government-sanctioned or naturally occurring in the free market. And I learned first-hand how right I was, last week and into this one, when I lost electric power and heat (and hot water) for nearly a week after a Detroit-area windstorm. DTE Energy (formerly Deroit Edison) is a crappy company that is slow to repair things and simply doesn’t prepare for disasters because the company has no competition.
I was sick as a dog Monday and Tuesday. I’m still sick. I got sick because I was very run down after several days of no electric power–from Wednesday until Sunday evening. There are still thousands in the Detroit area who still have no power after more than a week because of DTE.
On Wednesday of last week, Detroit had tropical-storm level gusts of wind–40 to 50 miles per hour. As a result some electric poles went down and about 800,000 people–a third of Metro Detroit electric customers–power. I was one of those people. After repeated false promises about when power would be restored–and repeated “head-fake” phone calls and voice-mails congratulating me on my restored power that, in fact, was NOT restored, I finally got my power back. But this was after several days of taking showers at the gym, going to the (very stuffy and humid) library and freeloaded at Starbucks (I can’t shop at a place that employs Muslim illegal aliens) to juice up my laptop and cell phone, and eating out. It’s not a healthy life. You feel rudderless and like a nomad. At least I did.
The first two nights, I looked at it like an adventure. I slept without heat in the cold Michigan winter, but it wasn’t so bad. The first night, it was in the high 30s, and the second night, it was in the high 20s. I slept in thermals, a sweatshirt, and wool socks, and it was very comfortable both nights. I used my cell phone flashlight to see around, and I watched movies on my laptop until the battery ran out. Several generous friends invited me to stay with them, but I’m a tough person and try to be up to challenges like this, even though most of my neighbors left my apartment building for hotel rooms and friends’ and relatives’ homes. Also, I like sleeping in my own bed, as most people do. I told people I ran into, “Well, my Holocaust survivor grandfather went through a lot worse, so this is nothing.” That was my attitude . . . for a while.
But then came Friday night and the Jewish Sabbath. And it was awful. Almost nobody was left in my building, that night. I walked to and from my friends’ home for the Sabbath meal, and it was just wicked cold–in the teens that night. I ended up sleeping with the aforementioned thermals and sweatshirt, as well as a wool sweater, a shearling sheepskin coat, and a goose down comforter. No dice. I was so cold, it was painful. The next day, I again walked to and from my friends’ home for the Sabbath lunch, and they suggested I stay for the afternoon. But I like to read the Wall Street Journal on Saturday, and I insisted on going home. The afternoon was a killer, even worse than the night, and it was painful to move or get up to go to the bathroom. I just couldn’t take it anymore. That night, I stayed with my very nice friends who were so welcoming. But it was too late. I was coming down with a really, really bad cold.
I should note that on Friday Night, I saw an Xfinity truck installing generators and, I think, transformers for its customers at my apartment complex. I saw Xfinity trucks everywhere. Saturday afternoon, I noted that there were three Xfinity generators around my apartment complex. Xfinity/Comcast has competition. Customers can leave the company and go elsewhere, and they do what it takes (sort of) to keep those customers. (Yes, I know Comcast has its problems, but DTE is even worse, apparently.) We can’t leave DTE Energy. They know we have nowhere else to go if we want electric power, and they treat us accordingly. They’ve never prepared for outages. And as a result, it always takes several days to restore power, when it’s much quicker elsewhere in the country where utilities and power companies must compete.
On Saturday Night, I checked my voicemail, and there were two messages from DTE Energy from that morning. “Congratulations, DTE will restore your power by 11:30 p.m. tonight,” went both messages. And guess what? 11:30 p.m. came and went. No power. Talk about over-promising and under-delivering. Several times that I called, the DTE Energy 800 number didn’t even know there was a power outage in my building. Since then, I’ve received daily messages from DTE, including this morning, that the company is still looking into my power problem and doesn’t know when it will be restored (it was already finally restored on Sunday Night).
This company isn’t competent because, without competition, it isn’t forced to be. They’ve never staffed up for emergencies, and as a result they have to bring in others from other states. What happens when there are disasters in other states, and they’re needed there? I said something like this to two of my minority neighbors in my building, but they vehemently defended the company. They spent money to stay at a hotel (and hotels jacked up the prices). Yet, they still defended this crap–the party line of a government-protected monopoly. Typical of the bread-and-circuses masses, they believe what they’re told in the media, and told me “how hard” DTE was working to restore our power. Really? How hard? How did they know that? Easy: because DTE Energy told them so. So gullible. (The DTE CEO was on TV claiming he was without power and wouldn’t give his own home priority. But, as a friend pointed out, he probably had a generator.)
Like I said, I got so run down and sick from the situation that I got very sick and so I was taken out of commission for an additional two days because of the whole experience.
Yes, I know we live in a spoiled country, when many people around the world don’t regularly have electric power and hot water, if ever. And I know I sound more than a little bit whiny. But we’ve become accustomed to electric power and heat, and it’s not like I have a fireplace or coal oven like in the olden days when people slept next to those to stay warm. I went into this with the best attitude ever–treating it like a test and an exciting adventure. But it went on too long, and DTE spoiled it by lying, not living up to expectations, and acting like the protected monopoly it is, taking me and many others for granted. Many–as I’ve noted–who still do not have power, more than a week later.
I was lucky to have a lot of friends who invited me to stay over, and took two of them up on the offer on that last night, when I was starting to get sick and just couldn’t take it anymore. But many people don’t have that, and they can’t afford the hotels that raised prices due to demand. What did they do, waiting for the DTE monopoly to do its job?
So, that’s where I’ve been the last week or so. And why I was gone.
It’s an experience I don’t want to repeat.
Tags: DTE Energy, Electric power, monopolies
Other aspects to the lack of competition; they almost certainly have deals with the politicians who presumably regulate them. Contribute to their campaigns, and as a result escape oversight.
Part of escaping oversight almost certainly means that the utility company cuts corners on maintenance, which almost certainly contributes to the massive numbers without power.
Yes, in spite of more and more information being available because of the internet, people are more and more gullible. (although maybe a little less than before, since Trump carried Michigan).
Little Al on March 16, 2017 at 7:32 pm