Some outages are easy to pick up on because there’s a piece of addressable equipment that fails and systems in place realize what customers are impacted by its obvious failure. But much like the power company the last mile or so of your service doesn’t include addressable equipment and outages which may be partial (like just certain channels, or box types) aren’t easily picked up on. Even if someone can drill down to check other equipment in your area, if the outage is partial (which it may be, it can get confusing if you don’t work with it daily), it may be difficult to call.
When I fall victim to these things (it’s been windy this year), the cooler I am about it with the rep and just ask simplified questions, the more I seem to be able to get done for myself and family. “Can you check other equipment in the area?” or “My neighbors have told me they’re out too, is there an escalation path we can take?” are good questions to ask. Actually showing some interest when dealing with any customer service types from utilities to banks has always gone a long long way for me.
In the worst case scenario, I’d imagine a few calls from people who are out in your area will trigger the dispatcher or field tech to either check a pedestal or escalate the problem to someone who handles distribution.
@andrew most companies have communications policies that restrict blogging, commenting, tweeting, etc. for the protection of everyone involved. I can’t say exactly who I work for (according to above mentioned policies), but people who work at these type of companies are users of the services as well. I’m a technical person and can’t really help too much with other problems, but I know the people I work with are very passionate and take a LOT of pride in their work.