Elderly woman was 'very distressed and upset' after being without power on coldest weekend of the year
AN elderly Caithness woman was "very distressed and upset" after being left without power on the coldest weekend of the year.
The 78-year-old who lives outside Wick spent hours on the phone trying to "contact SSE/Ovo but was passed from pillar to post" and had to wait two days before the issue was resolved.
A concerned resident, who did not wish to be named, helped the woman out as she had no hot water, no heating and no electricity.
The incident happened over the weekend of December 10/11 and was described by the resident as "the coldest weekend we have had all year".
She said: "We had power in our house and all our neighbours also had power so we knew it wasn’t an outage in the area."
She explained that the woman, who has health issues, had been waiting for two weeks to get a faulty smart meter replaced and had been told she would be on a billed meter in the meantime so she would not "run out of power," but that did not happen.
The concerned resident said: "After the elderly lady spending hours on the Saturday on the phone she was very distressed and upset, feeling at her wit's end.
"I then sat on the phone for one hour 44 minutes after also being swapped from pillar to post to be promised an engineer within four hours. Six hours later and no engineer appeared.
"This is a huge concern that this is happening on our doorsteps and it takes so long to get a hold of anyone or to even get through to the correct person to then be told someone would help and they just didn’t arrive.
"The woman was fortunate enough to have had help from us but some may be in remote areas and have no one."
She added: "It is being drilled into everybody to look out and care for our most vulnerable. The elderly are reaching crisis point and there is nothing anyone can do because they are being fobbed off. It is causing stress and frustration for many.
"What if this had been someone relying on feeding machines, pressure mattresses or medication pumps – the back-up batteries only last so long on those things."
Further phone calls were made without getting an answer. "I understand call centres are busy but these are very vulnerable people. It’s people's lives they are putting in jeopardy."
The person added: "Thankfully by the Sunday night at 6 o'clock we managed to get an engineer to her, but that had been another full day of waiting. It was the anxiety and worry the woman was feeling that got to me. I have honestly never felt so sorry for anyone than I did at that point. She was so upset. I just feel it’s not good enough for our most vulnerable to be treated in this way."
SSE sold its domestic energy retail supply business, SSE Energy Services, to Ovo Energy in January 2020. Ovo Energy said it would only be able to provide a "relevant response" with the customer's full account details.