First, I simply don’t believe the comment the spokeswoman made about holding crews over and securing local contractors. By all accounts, no one predicted how dangerous this storm would be until a few hours before it hit. If Pepco jumped into action “early” on Friday, it must have one helluva weather service — and one that doesn’t share information — because no one else saw it coming.

(The Post link you provide states exactly that.)

Pepco also said on 7/1 that it had requested 1,000 crews through mutual assistance, but received only 175 responses. Dominion seemed to rally more crews faster through mutual assistance, which makes me wonder exactly how early in the crisis Pepco actually made its request.

Second, I think Pepco fell down in its public outreach, especially CEO Thomas Graham. Making comments like, “You can’t say this is a Pepco issue,” which is a direct quote from his 7/1 news conference, is a great example of failing to sympathize with customers and own the problem.

In that same news conference, Graham acknowledged — and apparently it was a surprise to his PR people — that Pepco’s consumer website was down. Good move: Drive people to a website that isn’t operational. Even better: Tell people who don’t have power or Internet to check the website. Best: Scratch your head in confusion when informed that the website isn’t working. (How often are you really updating it, if you didn’t even notice it wasn’t functional?)

In addition to the notice you mentioned, IT also failed the company when robocalls started informing customers — some in the middle of the night — that power had been restored, when, in fact, it wasn’t.

On 7/3, Graham stalked away from a newsroom interview with WUSA following up on some comments he had made on the air a few minutes before. Not good. (http://www.wusa9.com/news/article/211456/373/VIDEO-Pepcos-Tom-Graham-Abruptly-Ends-Interview)

Having said all that, I think Pepco was somewhat unfairly maligned because of past performance. No one likes an outage, but less than 24 hours after the storm hit, people were taking to social networks to blast the company for not restoring power. Local media played this up, fanning the discontent.

Empty criticism from Gov. O’Malley and the utterly ineffectual Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett also fed the “pile on Pepco” trend. O’Malley and Leggett blatantly tried to turn the public’s growing frustration away from their own uselessness by slamming Pepco.

If I were in Graham’s shoes, I’d call O’Malley and Leggett on their comments right now — and certainly on 7/19 — to demand that Maryland and Montgomery County ante up the billions it would take to bury transmission and distribution lines. When the power goes out, blame them for failing to act in the public interest, if they don’t support the effort.

And, the next time some community activist tries to block Pepco from trimming trees or other vegetation management services, demand that O’Malley and Leggett stand up at the public meetings and say it MUST be done.

At the same time, make the investment — at least in the short term — in more personnel, and make a huge PR campaign around the effort. Take out want ads, go to job fairs, and drive Pepco-branded trucks around neighborhoods until people start complaining about seeing the logo too much.

Turn Pepco employees into ambassadors, too. With thousands of employees living in the region, the company ought to have on-the-ground points of contact in every neighborhood. Using these employee-neighbor ambassadors will also add a human face and increase credibility.

Pepco has a lot of tools it can apply to re-build goodwill — and it needs to use them.