Seriously, FPL?!
Well, we woke up Sunday looking forward to another day of relaxing. The plan was to totally “veg” on the couch, watch TV and movies and order in, my favorite meal, pizza. Mike had been pretty sick with a miserable cold for a week and a half so we figured relaxation would be the best thing for him. What is it that is said about the “best laid plans?”
I awoke around 8:00 a.m., quietly got out of bed and came downstairs to put up a pot of coffee. I turned on my laptop and proceeded to do whatever it is that we all do trying to keep up with the incessant emails and such. Having gone quickly through the emails I decided to start painting. Nine months ago we bought a portable school building to be used as a game room (another story) and the building has fourteen florescent lights. I am painting the fourteen lenses to look like stained glass. The reason that this is relevant to my story is that I put a light behind it as I am painting. As I was setting myself up with everything within my reach the AC / heating unit shut down with quite a bang. This was odd but I paid it no mind.
Ready to go, I hit the switch on the light which didn’t go on. Figuring it was the light bulb, I put a new bulb in. Again, it didn’t work so I tried one more bulb. Nothing. The next steps I took were to check the outlet, change the extension cord and run around the house like a madwoman trying to turn things on. Mind you all I really needed to do was to look at the microwave and observe the absence of the clock readout. Establishing now that the downstairs was without power, I ran upstairs to check there. Still no power which finally lead to my first of many calls to FPL (Florida Power & Light).
Upon calling FPL and doing the multi-button response system, I was informed that they were aware of the problem and a technician would be out to assess the problem. Just to make things clear, there were no storms, no hurricanes, no winds and the temperature outside hovered in the mid 30′s, a record low. With the temperature in the house dropping rapidly and no means of warming up, we waited. About one hour later I went through the routine and again called FPL to see if there were any updates. I received good news. A technician would be out and would fix the problem and we would have power back on around 2:30 in the afternoon. We bundled up and patiently waited and by 3 o’clock I was back on the phone. The new time was set to be 5:45, but miraculously the house lit up at 4:00. This was perfect, just in time for the temperatures to really drop with the evening coming. We ordered our pizza!
Well, obviously I wouldn’t be writing if it were all that simple. At 6:00 we would have sworn there was a poltergeist the way lights and appliance were going on and off and flickering and then we were in the dark again. The new information was that 137 people were out of electricity because of a problem with a main line and the latest update for repair was to be at 10:45. At this point we were getting envious of some of our neighbors as we listened to the sound of the incessant hum of their generators. Not much else that we could do other than cuddle and wait.
Mike decided he’d best be under the covers in order to avoid a further chill so he went to bed. I sat with my son, Scott under a blanket, by candlelight anticipating some indication that we would actually get warm nights sleep. By 11:30 p.m., I called again. FPL would have the problem resolved by the end of the day, “tomorrow“. Monday. I do understand that some things take time. I don’t understand how much money we have to keep feeding FPL in order for them to actually come up with a method of prevention or a viable solution to a power outage when the temperatures get cold. So frustrating, so cold, so uncomfortable through the night.
Monday morning we woke to mid 30′s temperatures again. Mike was going to work and for the first time ever, he looked forward to it as he would have heat in his vehicle. I, being currently out of work needed a plan of which I had none. In addition, having originally fended off catching Mike’s cold, now I was sick. My plan was to go to my sister-in-laws until evening to keep warm. What was it I said about the best laid plans? Mary, who normally doesn’t go into work, needed to go in Monday. I picked up my first of many cups of coffee for the day and headed home.
It seemed useless to keep calling FPL, but I made one token call only to receive the same info…the end of the day! I bundled myself and busied myself at one point realizing that it was warmer in the garage than in the house. I took 3 trips to the gas station to buy hot cups of coffee and took my time doing so as the heat in the car was amazingly comforting. As I straightened up in the garage, I listened to the neighbors complaining and when a FPL truck finally showed up around 2:30 I thought somebody would crucify the guys. At 4:00 the power was on.
It had been a long cold one and my phone hadn’t stopped ringing with concerns and offers. I let Mike know we were good to go and I returned all other phone calls, reassuring everyone that the drama was over. I turned on the heat, fired up my laptop, made myself a cup of tea and put my feet up to relax.
Still sitting in the same position at 7:00 I started noticing on my computer screen the reflection of the fluorescent light behind me; it was flickering. This occurred for a while on and off so I figured “better safe than sorry” and I called FPL this time pushing the buttons to eventually reach a live person. I explained that the lights were flickering, but we still had power and the response was that she would have a technician come back and assess the situation. No sooner did I hang up the phone when half the house went dark. It was at that moment that Mike walked in from work rolling his eyes as he came to the realization that we were still at the mercy of FPL.
Mike being a service technician is knowledgeable in a vast amount of technical situations and took it upon himself to check our electric lines coming into the house. His meter read 115 volts and considering it should have read 220 volts we obviously still had a problem. One “leg” was not working coming into the house and thankfully it was FPL’s responsibility and not ours. I made yet another phone call thinking it best to give the technician a heads up as to what he was dealing with. Upon calling I was finally connected to a person to whom I could explain the situation. I informed her that half of our electric had gone out and that we were only receiving limited voltage. Her rude response caught me totally off guard as she replied, “you should be happy that you have some power working, there are still people that don’t have any.” Not the right thing to say to a paying customer who has been without electricity for two days in record low temperatures. I simply hung up.
About one hour later a nice gentleman came to investigate our problem and Mike told him our current situation. He acknowledged the problem and told us that someone would be back before 12:30 p.m. to do the repair. We called again an hour after he left to make sure that the order was in and were told that the electric lines would be repaired by the end of the next day, Tuesday. Frustrated, tired and cold we retired for the second night in a row in mid 30 degree temperatures.
At 3:30 in the morning, Scott was knocking on our door. FPL was at the house; they hooked up a temporary power supply and would be back by the end of the day to do the repair. As long as we had heat and power we could wait. We were however only using one thing at a time that pulled 220 volts. When I turned on the stove, I turned off the heat and when I turned on the dryer, I turned off the stove and so on.
Well, about 8:15 p.m. Tuesday night, just as American Idol had started, the doorbell rang. So silly me I commented to Mike that I didn’t want them to work on it and shut down the power at that time. Yes, we enjoy American Idol because sadly enough watching people make fools of themselves is just about the only thing on TV that you can laugh about and laughter is good. Anyway, Mike answered the door to find the same nice gentleman that had come the night before. He was inquiring as to whether we had power. I guess my husband loves me because he told the man that we were fine and that we had no complaints because he didn’t want them working on the power. Now I ask you, if you had this huge power supply on the side of your house that the electric was running off of and you really weren’t sure if it was sufficient enough to maintain the essentials in your house, would you consider everything fine?
Now it’s Wednesday evening and I have no changes to report. We still have power and with it heat and no sign at all today of FPL. My assumption: American Idol starts again tonight at 8 o’clock. Wanna bet the doorbell rings at 8:15?
I’ll keep you informed.
3 Responses to “Seriously, FPL?!”
By Diane on Jan 20, 2010 | Reply
FPL update…My assumption was wrong that FPL would be back to interrupt American Idol. It’s now Wednesday morning, a week later and our house is till running off what turns out to be a three phase transformer.
Last Friday to my surprise I walked outside to find quite colorful flags and markings all over our lawn. Apparently, the water and cable companies had marked their lines so that FPL would not damage them during the repair. The required repair needed is on an underground electric service cable, although we still have no idea when this repair is to take place.
In the meantime, we received a letter from FPL. Other than stating what we already knew, it also said that repairs would be made by Kilowatt Electric, an FPL approved contractor, within the next 20 days. Let’s review. We had no storms, hurricanes or natural disasters in Florida. As far as we know we are one of the few that are in need of a major repair. Is FPL really that understaffed that they need to hire sub-contractors to do their work? More importantly, are the outrageous rates so high because FPL is hiring sub-contractors? Gives us something to think about.
In addition, the letter also states that the contractor may be required to dig on our property and that any obstruction must be removed. It further specifies that these obstructions such as driveways, sidewalks, patios, etc. are to be replaced at the customer’s expense. As you can imagine, this got my attention. I fully understand that a problem inside our house might be our expense to repair; emphasis on might! A necessary repair for the underground cable, I think not!
Three phone calls later, I have been informed that in most cases tearing up structures is not required. As I sit and wait with Murphy on my shoulder, I wonder where this adventure will lead. More to come…
By Diane on Jan 25, 2010 | Reply
Final FPL Update, I hope. Well, for a change the adventure that I had anticipated was not an adventure at all. A mere 15 days after the beginning of our power outage escapade we are up and running on our own power. Kilowatt Electric showed up, dug up about a 5 foot circle in the lawn to pull up and replace the shorted out and decayed service cable. Uneventful and other than having to reset all our clocks the problem is resolved. Unless of course, our bill is out of whack.
By Diane on Feb 11, 2010 | Reply
Not done with FPL yet. The last statement I made about our bill being out of whack must have been a premonition. We received our bill and at a quick glance it was not much higher than expected. At $205 for the month I thought the cold weather in mid January had attributed to the slight hike. Although, giving it a little more thought I realized that we did go through 3 days without power.
We actually had been having the payments automatically debited from our account. This was through no choice of our own, we were late on two payments so we were offered the choice of giving FPL a $400 deposit or going to automatic bill pay; not much of a choice there. Anyway, I put the bill aside figuring I’d take another look at it. Of course, when I put the bill aside I neglected to remember that the bills, actually most of the utility and phone companies are no longer coming a month in advance. We’ve been receiving our bills about two weeks before they are due, not a lot of notice, but that’s another story.
By the time I looked at the FPL bill again it was early in the morning on February 9th. Actually taking the time to go over all of the usage and credits and debits, I realized that this bill had included the credit that FPL had allotted consumers. The actual usage charges were $350 for the month. Needless to say, I flipped out and called FPL.
I expressed to someone in the accounting department that something was very wrong. I explained that in the 17 years that I have been living in this house, I have never received a bill even close to that amount. I informed her about the situation we had dealt when the power was out and told her that the technician who was here had told me that the transformer that was hooked up to our house was also supplying power to a few of our neighbors. I questioned her as to whether that could have affected our usage. I continued to explain to her that while we were hooked up to the transformer, Mike and I had gone out to look at our meter and after having shut virtually everything off in the house, the meter was spinning out of control. She asked me to read the current numbers off of the meter.
After I provided the current numbers in the dials, the woman asked if she could put me on hold. Upon returning to the line she informed me that she would be sending out a technician to look at our meter. Her projection for the current month based on the numbers I read her was $500. Obviously, something is wrong with our meter!!!
In the meantime, I asked her to please remove us from automatic bill pay. I did not want the money pulled from my account before a credit was issued. She agree, told me that nothing was due at that time and that my next payment I would have to pay on my own.
Well, as you might have guessed, I checked my bank account the following morning. My account was debited $205. I called FPL again. This time I was told that the debit was scheduled for the 9th and that in order to have canceled the automatic debit before being charged I would have had to call on the 8th. When someone says, “It’s all the timing,” they know what they’re talking about. On an added note, no sign from the technician as of yet. The saga continues.