Why is "customer service" one-way?

I work from home. In the little town I work in, windstorms took out power lines for a week this winter. Apparently, there were yet a few branches that hadn't succumbed to the wind because on a blustery spring day, my power suddenly went out.
I'm pretty flexible, so I ran some errands and got up early the next day to make up work. I logged on and was in the groove when suddenly the power went out again. This is suddenly costing me money, and I'm on a deadline, so I call the department of public works. They have no idea, so they connect me to the power company. The power company has one of those automated phone systems (if I'm not careful, the whole blog could be about interfacing with those damn things). So right away, they see the number I'm calling from and a voice asks "Do you live at 666 Wysteria Lane? If so press 1." Well I do and I did. After much pressing of 1 and 2. I find that this is a "scheduled outage" 73 families have been affected, 23 of them have reported it (it is Spring Break, all the other desperate house wives must've wondered what was going on, too).
Okay, at this point I have to ask, if it's a scheduled outtage, and the power company can map my phone number to my address automatically, and they know how many families will be affected, doesn't it make sense that they could've called me first to let me know my power was going to be out? I mean its an automated system. Why not use it for the powers of good? At least call the town you are working in.