To our valued customers,

We write to provide an update on the devastating consequences resulting from Hurricane Milton and our operational status. Since July, there have been 3 major hurricanes that have struck the southeastern United States. These three storms have had compounding negative effects on Tampa Bay and our ability to respond timely to customer demands. The first storm, Hurricane Beryl, caused a nationwide parts deficiency that continues to strain the supply chain today as many available parts and resources were routed to those affected areas. Just two weeks ago, Hurricane Helene passed off our coast and resulted in historic flooding unseen in Tampa Bay for 100 years. Our costal and South Tampa customers were (and continue to be) recovering from Helene when Hurricane Milton made landfall in the Tampa Bay Area just a few days ago. Since the week prior to Helene, our GSC of Tampa team has been working 24/7 responding to our customers. Including providing service during both storms where possible. We never closed and we never purposely ignored any customer.

Ultimately, Hurricane Milton and Helene severely impacted our responsiveness. During Hurricane Milton, Generator Supercenter was experienced staffing shortages due to mandatory evacuations. Additionally, we have employees whose homes have been flooded, who have lost vehicles, and who were trapped in their homes or neighborhoods for several days. Some are still living without power or sewage and drive through flooded water every day and are sleeping on borrowed couches. Some of our employees had to leave the Tampa Bay area for safety reasons. As you know, the threat was real. We are now fully staffed and doing our level best to dig out of the backlog. We have also benefited from the larger Generator Supercenter Franchisor who sent multiple technicians and truck loads of parts from Texas. Many of our customers have already met these technicians who left their homes in Texas after dealing with Beryl and rushed to Tampa Bay. These folks have been working non-stop since July. These additional assets and parts have helped restore power and address some of our backlog. Unfortunately, we have not been able to address every failure, and for that we sincerely apologize.

For context, our office was without phone and internet service until Saturday. Our internet was restored only with a Starlink satellite device delivered to us from Texas by our fellow Franchisee. While we attempted to disperse call responses to our employees at their homes, none had internet connections to answer or respond to calls. At times we were receiving over 60 incoming calls per minute. On Saturday October 12th, we received 5,568 phone calls. This is in addition to thousands of text messages and emails. Most of these calls were from people who are not our existing customers and were desperate for help. Ultimately, the sheer volume crashed our phone system and made it physically impossible to be responsive to our customers. When we did dispatch technicians, their phones did not have any data or GPS guidance or tracking. They could not access our systems remotely and struggled to maintain operational efficiency. Most of the vehicles in our fleet were completely out of fuel by the second day after consuming our fuel reserves. We even drove to unaffected areas out of town and siphoned fuel from friendly boat owners to continue our service routs. We are dismayed that we were not able to respond to every request in this time of need, but the challenges are real and unprecedented.

A limited number of our customers were affected by a “1902” error code failure on a newer Generac Generator. This is very unfortunate and having your generator repaired “under warranty” for this latent issue is of little consolation. This is a significant repair of the rotor system, and we have worked tirelessly to source these parts and technicians to repair these generators as quickly as possible. We have been communicating directly with Generac management everyday regarding this issue and they have staged parts in Florida to expedite repair. We are confident that Generac will address this problem in the future and apologize for those of you who have been adversely affected.

Moving forward, we have received your voicemails and have converted every message to written text and imported them into our operating system. Our team is working tirelessly to triage these messages so we can respond to our existing customers. For those of you whose generators are operating, we kindly ask that you wait a week or so to call us for maintenance or for non-critical issues so that we can prioritize those who need us immediately. In this regard, we will be communicating and responding to you shortly.

Please remember that we are a locally owned and operated business and every employee you interact with over the coming days has been equally affected by these storms. These associates have chosen to help provide backup power to those in need over tending to the direct needs of their families and friends. Your kindness and patience when working with them is truly appreciated.

Very Truly Yours,

Generator Supercenter of Tampa Bay