A mum was forced to huddle with her daughter around her car heater after their home was repeatedly left without power following Storm Eunice.
The lights initially went off at Bobbi Lamble's home at around 10.30am on Friday, February 18 as winds reached their highest speeds, before being restored via a temporary generator on Saturday evening.
However, they were left without power again when the generator developed a fault, meaning there was no electricity for much of Sunday - and while an energy supply has now been re-established, Bobbi said she has been told to expect outages for up to another fortnight.
"It's been an absolute nightmare," Bobbi, mum to five-year-old Amelia Trippit, told SurreyLive.
"There are a lot of people on the estate who have stair lifts, and people with children who have oxygen tanks. No-one has offered any kind of support to anybody."
Bobbi lives at Kingsmoor Park, a development of 224 affordable homes in Woking, Surrey, that opened in 2015 and is managed by Thames Valley Housing.
She said the housing association's only contact with residents was on Friday, advising them to check the UK Power Networks (UKPN) website for updates.
Bobbi contacted UKPN, who she says initially offered to cover the cost of hotel accommodation and food for her household, before realising that her supplier was actually another company called GTC.
After struggling to speak to anyone at GTC for several hours, she says she was eventually told that they cannot offer the same kind of financial support because they are a smaller company than UKPN.
She also learned that she had not been speaking to an actual employee of GTC, as it had outsourced its emergency number to another company.
A spokesperson for GTC apologised for any inconvenience caused and said that the information Bobbi received on the phone was incorrect, confirming that the company follows the same compensation requirements as other operators.
"If there's a fault as a result of a storm or other event then there can be a huge increase in the number of calls," he said. "We do use an external company to help us manage those calls, and it sounds as though we need to give them an update in terms of what the compensation requirements are.
"We will be contacting people proactively, although if people want to contact us directly or submit a claim form, that's also available from our website or they can contact our customer services number on 01359 302255."
SurreyLive approached Thames Valley Housing for comment.
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