Monday, June 25, 2007

Power companies & the privacy Act

Here is a story on this subject:

Two weeks ago I called up:

'The power is out at XXXXXX water plant'

"what is your account number"

"Don't have that, I'm the contractor running the plant"

"We can't help you without the account #"

" 5000 people are about to run out of water in one hour- you are saying ypu won't help?"

"We cAn't help without the account number"

" OK, thanks for nothing"

Go for a drive- find linesman- problem sorted in ten minutes...

I'm not totally blaming the power company- the dumbass council had NO backup plan in case of power failure for a supposedly essential service....

5 comments:

MathewK said...

No account, no help, that's it? Damn couldn't they just check using the address or the name of the plant, that's deserving of a proper flogging.

Oi said...

After a few episodes of giving estranged husbands of a customer or two details of the ex and similar embarrasments, the droids at the call centre were instructed to give out no information except within clearly defined circumstances.
They were told that they were not there to make decisions.
One cannot blame them for refusing any request that doesnt fit those parameters, as it could mean their job.

Oswald Bastable said...

All I wanted to know was:

Had an outage been reported in my area? (probably, as all the nearby farms were dark)

When might the power be back on?

The limited service droid was at a loss as to what district I was in!

I don't blame the operator- they are only as good as their programming and I will take this up with the local council who should have addressed this sort of issue years ago, before I started there.

Can you believe they have absolutly zero backup power on a supposed essential utility?

Deadman said...

"Can you believe they have absolutly zero backup power on a supposed essential utility?"

Is that like "riding shotgun with empty barrels"???

sweetpea said...

The real fun and games start when you give them the account number only to discover not only are you not the account holder but you have no idea who the account holder is apart from some minion employed by your employer the last time the details were up dated because they won't tell you because of the privacy act.

Ok I don't know for sure that the power companies are quite that bad but I do know a phone company that is.