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More than 120,000 Pepco customers were left without power after last week’s storm, and the company’s response drew the ire of the public and pretty much every elected official in Montgomery County. It’s hardly the first time Pepco has made the folks of MoCo really, really mad, leading people to ever more heated language and to Twitter. But The List has to wonder — if complaining about Pepco is so omnipresent, what’s the point? Does your carefully worded letter to the company president about spoiled food get read? Does anyone at Pepco appreciate your clever tweets? The List spoke to spokesperson Bob Hainey about Pepco’s take on customer complaints.

1. Pepco says it does read complaints

   Hainey says complaints with specific problems and suggestions are read and passed up through the company. “People complain about tree trimming, it goes to the tree trimming department,” he says. “People complain about customer service, it goes to customer service.” He has not tabulated the number of complaints from the most recent outages, but he is “sure it’s many.”

2. Pepco is not impressed with your rant

   “Sometimes people will just send a rant,” says Hainey. “They won’t put a name, maybe a first name, and they won’t put an address.” Hainey says this kind of venting is not ignored, especially if it contains some kind of specific problem like a downed tree limb, but it isn’t treated the same way as a specific and detailed complaint.

3. Pepco says it is well aware of the frustration

   “They’ve made their voice known loud and clear,” Hainey says. “It’s time to turn the page.”

4. Pepco is not monitoring the I Hate Pepco Twitter feed

   “There’s a lot of Twitter feeds and Facebook,” says Hainey, “but we know what the customer wants.” Translation: Pepco will not be seeing your angry tweet.

5. Pepco thinks it’s not as bad as it could be

   Though Hainey agrees that frustration is justified, he cites bad weather and the company’s reliability plan in its defense. “We’re suffering from kind of pancake effect,” he says. “We suffered from two storms in the winter. Then we had those horrible storms in the summer. That’s why we said we’d put this reliability plan in place.” Hainey says things would have been worse without the reliability plan and that it’s not just rhetoric. “We’re trimming trees,” he says. “Not just trimming trees. We’re replacing underground wires.”

6. Pepco does not recommend buying a generator

   “Ma’am, I wouldn’t go that far,” Hainey says. “I haven’t given up on Pepco.”