Power cut hits restaurant

A restaurant owner has lost $50,000 in food and produce after the power to her eatery was cut off unexpectedly.

Xania Jade, chef and owner of Lot One restaurant in Sydney’s Potts Point said it hit her hard.

“I’ve panicked and run through here which is the kitchen and all the fridge displays were off”, Ms Jade told A Current Affair.

She sat there waiting for the power to come back on. And the food was getting warmer by the hour.

So she rang Energy Australia who told her they had no record of her opening an account with the company.

As a result, she called AGL which had provided power to the previous tenant.

She then discovered that AGL had been supplying power to the restaurant before cutting it off without warning.

That had her on the phone making many calls over the next few hours. Then she discovered Energy Australia had connected the wrong address.

Things were getting nowhere. So she called A Current Affair to get them on to the story.

So the show got to work and after numerous calls, and after a few hours of pressure, AGL finally came to the rescue and reconnected the power.

Ms Jade had originally chosen Energy Australia as her provider. But now with Ms Jade re-opening the restaurant doors, the company has now welcomed the small business owner as a new customer. Just another way to secure more business.

Energy Australia admitted it had messed up. “Businesses depend on reliable supplies of electricity and in this instance we could have done better,” an Energy Australia spokesman told A Current Affair.

Energy Consumers Australia CEO, Rosemary Sinclair says there’s been a decline in customer service with the intense competition between power companies.

“When we've got a small business customer switching between retailers, the onus is on the retailers to get the processes sorted out so that it's not the customer who's left with the problem and the resulting bill,” Ms Sinclair told A Current Affair.

Leon Getler 31st May 2018.