Duke Energy sucks

Let me lay out the time line and I'll let the readers decide if these are acceptable business practices.

On approximately 12:30 pm Tuesday, a semi tractor passed by my business in Loveland. As it passed, it proceeded to tear down a power line on the street and along with it ripping my electric meter off of my building and dragging it down the street.

Being a great citizen, he promptly kept driving.

The workers at the site managed to get power restored for the block within about two hours. Since I had no meter, I was told that I would have to have an electrician install a meter base and an entrance cable. Once those were installed, they could then install temporary service until a permit was issued and a final inspection was completed.

I had an electrician on my site and he had the work done by about 6:00 Tuesday night. Of course, now Duke Energy tells me that because I have a new meter base, I would have to have a permit issued prior to their installation of service. I had an inspector to the place today at 11:00 am today and he issued the permit.

Now I call the installation people and they tell me that they need one of their techs to come out just to establish the service that's needed and that it may take 3 business days to get that person out. In addition, because of the weather, they have no one out today. Nevermind that I've driven to my office three times today.

She then proceeds to tell me that it might be 7 - 10 business days before I have power. Not exactly a good time to have no electricity for an accountant.

Now let me ask this question, if the phone system at Duke energy were to go down, do you think they would tolerate their hardware company telling them it would take 7-10 days to restore their phone systems to operating order?

It's not like I have an option to call Mortimer and Randolph's competitor(s) to get access to electricity.

So the question is this. How much should I seek for damages when I call my attorney Monday morning?