New service sends personal
outage updates to cell phones
Jackson, Miss. – A storm rages while
you are traveling. Is the power on at home? How can you tell? Don’t worry. A new
service from Entergy Mississippi, Inc. will let you know.
My Account Anywhere lets
customers send and receive text information about power outages through their
cell phones.
“Customers can report an outage and
get updates without ever having to call us,” said Gloria Johnson, director of
customer service for Entergy Mississippi, Inc. “We’re working hard to increase
self-service options like this. We know our customers want and appreciate this
kind of convenience.”
My Account Anywhere keeps
customers in touch with their electric service when they are “on the go.” When
away from their home, business or computers, customers can access critical
information quickly and conveniently.
My Account Anywhere lets
customers use their cell phone to:
-
Report a power outage.
-
Receive alerts that there was an
outage or that power is restored.
-
Know how long an outage will
be/was, in case they need to take action for loved ones or property.
-
Know that loved ones, such as
elderly parents, are safe or need attention; property is safe or needs
attention.
-
Know when it may be convenient to
return from evacuation due to a hurricane.
To use the service, customers must
register a cell phone number to their Entergy Mississippi account. Multiple
accounts may be registered to one phone and one account may be registered to
multiple phones. For example, a customer could have a home, business and
relative’s account registered to her phone, and her spouse could have the same
accounts registered to another cell phone as well.
Registration is simple. From any
text-capable cell phone, send the message “reg” (without quotes) to 368374. The
system will respond and ask for an Entergy account number and ZIP code.
“My Account Anywhere provides
routine outage information during normal weather conditions,” added Johnson.
“During incidents of widespread damage caused by a major storm, outage text
messages may not be available for affected areas for several days until we
determine restoration times.”
Once estimated restoration times are
determined, updates will be sent by text message and made available on View
Outages at entergy.com.
The complete list of My Account
Anywhere keyword commands and what they do is below:
-
REG (to register an account and add
additional accounts).
-
OUT (to report an outage on an
account).
-
STAT (to request status on an
outage for an account).
-
HELP (to see all keyword commands
available).
-
NICK (to see all accounts and
nicknames. To set up a nickname).
-
CANCEL (to deregister an account
from a cell phone).
-
PAUSE (to temporarily turn off
outage text messages to a cell phone).
-
RESUME (to resume text messages to
a cell phone after using the pause command).
Depending on their wireless plans,
customers may be charged for text messages associated with this service.
Detailed information is available at
entergy-mississippi.com.
Entergy Mississippi, Inc. provides
electricity to more than 433,000 customers in 45 counties. It is a subsidiary of
Entergy Corporation. Entergy Corporation is an integrated energy company engaged
primarily in electric power production and retail distribution operations.
Entergy owns and operates power plants with approximately 30,000 megawatts of
electric generating capacity, and it is the second-largest nuclear generator in
the United States. Entergy delivers electricity to 2.7 million utility customers
in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.
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entergy-mississippi.com