NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) — Entergy’s ongoing issues extend beyond customers being frustrated with high power bills. Now a local coffee shop, French Truck Coffee in Mid-City says Entergy can’t even keep their lights on.
Located on North Scott Street, French Truck has lost power 4 times in the last few weeks. It is causing frustration to brew up towards Entergy for owner Geoffrey Meeker.
“It is really frustrating because we don’t have a choice, at least with internet if you don’t like Cox, there is AT&T, but with electricity, it is a monopoly and Entergy made $1.1 billion last year,” French Truck Coffee Owner & Founder Geoffrey Meeker said.
Meeker says what’s scary is these outages aren’t even because of a storm. It has been sunny when the power has gone out. He believes it is because of the old power lines in the area, even though this shop is new.
“They didn’t change anything even though this is a new development. They just connected us to their old system. It doesn’t make me feel good that the next time we get a hurricane, it means we could expect 21 days of outages,” he said.
Every time this happens they have to shut down the business, employees are sent home with no wages, and they lose everything in their fridges. The outages even cause equipment failures which cost $500,000 to repair each time.
“Some days the outages happen at 9 in the morning, so we will lose the whole day’s revenue which is $3,000 to $4,000 a day,” Meeker said.
Others say it is a city-wide issue.
“Why, they aren’t taking care of the lines, they aren’t taking care of the poles,” he said.
Entergy said in a statement: “We understand that any outage, especially unplanned is an inconvenience. We’re working every day to improve our reliability. Specific to the interruption impacting French Truck Coffee, we had a scheduled interruption taken to help strengthen the grid in the area. Other factors that caused an interruption in service were animal and weather related. We are continuing our reliability work in the area near French Truck Coffee, as well as throughout New Orleans, to focus on decreasing customer interruptions and outage durations.”
“Just provide the service you charge me for and don’t interrupt my business, that’s all I need,” this business owner said.
Entergy said that their customer service team would be reaching out to French Truck Coffee. Geoffrey Meeker with French Truck said he already talked to Entergy today and they are working through the claims process next.
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Meeker also wants City Council to get involved and do something about this since they are in charge of the Public Utility Commission.
“Go after Entergy. Make them harden the lines,” he said.
