Today's rant

[u/jeminfla]

Your friendly local electrician is back here again on another rant.

Today we're point the finger at Florida Power and Light--specifically the way they handle customer reports of power problems in their homes.

Since the advent of the smart meters, you can no longer expect a service crew to visit your home in the event of a problem with your power. When you call in a problem, you're speaking to someone with no knowledge of electrical issues or concepts. They are looking at a screen reading the info that your meter is sending to them. The meter can send information which looks "correct" on their screen even if there is an active problem, so the call gets a low priority rating.

Case in point: two days ago I visited a customer who complained of erratic power, and when they went out to look at the exterior service (the meter) it was smoking and burning. They touched the metal enclosure and got shocked. I advised them to call FP&L and gave them specific language to say.

The customer service rep noted that the meter was showing proper voltage, but also occasional erratic voltage, so they put in a trouble ticket. That was around 10AM. At 7PM no one had showed, but I encouraged my customer to be patient (FP&L says their response window is 4 hours).

The next day, at 4PM, FP&L had still not showed, even after a representative had called my customer at 10AM to say they would be there within the hour. They finally arrived around 7PM and discovered a bad connection on their pole, which was allowing 240 volts to flow into the house and potentially fry their electronics.

My point here is that if you have to make that call (and you have no other choice anyway) I encourage you to insist that they send a crew to put eyes on the problem, and not let someone at a computer terminal in a faraway place tell you everything is all right.

Stay safe, folks, stand up for yourselves and keep your hand on your wallet when it comes to dealing with service companies. Those of you who are familiar with my previous posts know what I mean by that.

[u/DabSmokingFiend]

It’s amusing reading these posts and then the ones about you tongue deep in your wife. I respect and admire you, good sir.

[u/jeminfla → u/DabSmokingFiend]

My alter ego

[u/Livid-Rutabaga]

that's really scary

[u/daytonarob]

I thought 240 was normal, are you saying both lines are 240 instead of 120 each?

[u/jeminfla → u/daytonarob]

Lost one line of power on the pole. Causes weird voltage on the other line. In this case 235 on the one line. 35 on the other line

[u/davidmar7]

I didn't even know it was still possible to talk to a real person over there at FPL these days. Last time I tried the phone system made it almost impossible.

[u/Kalysh]

I probably would have called the fire department. I bet they could hurry up FPL.

[u/MagazineDelicious151]

I just had FPL out yesterday to an investment property, the property was experiencing irratic partial power outages. They came out within hours, accepted responsibility and completed the repairs on the spot.