The Ratings Are In: Nstar Improved, But Has a Long Way to Go

Well, many of you were quite gracious to Nstar when it came to how well the utility responded to Hurricane Sandy ... but many of you think there's still a LONG way to go.

Last week, we asked you to rate Nstar's response to Hurricane Sandy on a scale of 1-10. We specifically asked you to think about this year's response in comparison to the response to major power outage events in 2011 (remember Irene and Snowtober?)

We received numerous comments both here on the Patch site and over on the Wayland Patch page on Facebook.

The average rating: About 4 (not everyone assigned a real number, so we're fudging the average a bit, but there were more zeroes than 10s).

In several cases, commenters admitted that Nstar did better than last year in some parts of town, even if their home remained powerless just a bit too long.

"I give NStar a zero for service here, but high marks for service elsewhere (assuming 'elsewhere' has its power back by now)," wrote Susan Koffman. She added that her section of Sherman's Bridge Road didn't receive power until some time between 12:30 p.m. and 4 p.m. on Thursday (three days after Sandy struck).

WaylandRes had a better experience, especially as compared to being without power for four days last year.

"I would give NSTAR rate = 10," WaylandRes wrote. "We lost power but got it back within 12 hours. Pat Scully from NSTAR called me twice after I got power back on but he wanted to doublecheck since he noticed that all my lights were off. I appreciated his call and NSTAR's responsiveness."

While WaylandRes praised Nstar's customer service, Another Wayland Resident was not so pleased.

"I also would rate NSTAR a big fat 0. This is the 4th time in 13 months that we have lost power for over 48 hours. I saw an NSTAR employee late Tues. night and he laughed at me when I asked him how long he thought it would take and told me that they will fix it one day. We received no phone call throughout these last 4 days. It just got restored in the last hour [comment posted Nov. 1, 4:50 p.m.] but no phone call from NSTAR to inform us of anything. Purely the worst service I have ever seen from a company in my life!!!!!"

Clearly, power restoration following Hurricane Sandy was a polarizing event for folks in Wayland. There were only a few comments that fell anywhere in the middle of the scale.

One was that of Rev Maddie Sinfantus, who gave Nstar a 7, "mostly because it was a vast improvement over the two storms last year when were out one week both times."

For Nstar's part, a press release delievered at 8:15 a.m. on Nov. 2 announced that the utility had restored all of its customers to normal operations. Following the October 2011 snowstorm, which began on Oct. 29 as well, Nstar was still working to restore pockets of Wayland come 8 a.m. on Nov. 3.

That means that Nstar did manage to restore Wayland at least 24 hours earlier this year than last.