CLEVELAND (WJW) – The FOX 8 I-Team has asked Cleveland Public Power to explain what happened to a plan that would have prevented long delays trying to report power outages.

Last weekend, after fierce storms, many of you complained you had trouble getting through to Cleveland Public Power.

We’ve reported on this before, and we dug up an email from 2020 with Cleveland City Hall telling us of plans to buy a new system to take calls about power outages.

A spokesperson in the mayor’s office at the time wrote, “We are also planning to acquire an interactive voice response system that will take up to 1,800 calls simultaneously.”

But, it never happened.

So, we asked Cleveland Public Power whatever happened to that. We’ve received no response.

Last weekend, the I-Team also called the Cleveland Public Power trouble line and we waited as long as 29 minutes for an answer.

In recent days, Brendan Connolly was among the customers waiting and waiting to get through.

“We’re not the only people feeling the pain. Everyone seems to be having the same problem with Cleveland Public Power. I mean, it’s at the point that we want to switch to someone else,” he said.

Some city council members are now taking a look at that 2020 plan for a new phone system. We’ll let you know if it leads to action.