Fighting with a utility company.

[Mustang_Cougar]

We own a business in a rural town, and like most of America, utility deregulation didn't do anything to introduce competition...we're stuck with the same 800lb gorilla that we've always had. That said, a couple of months ago we had what we thought was a complete server failure; luckily for us, it was just our APC battery backup system. However, come to find out, the utility (Avista...hate them guys) shut down power to most of the town for scheduled maintenance. Having worked for an insurance company, I knew darn well that there was no chance of reimbursement for our backup system (nor for the downtime we had as a result), but I still called the utility to discuss this. They advised, that by law, all they are required to do is post an ad in the local newspaper warning of the shutdown. Now our local newspaper is a rural local newspaper...much ado about cow-tipping, the pumpkin pie eating contest, and so forth; furthermore, it's only published once a month and isn't a "real" newspaper. Still, I pressed my disapproval about this way of "notifying" customers and suggested that in the future they put a note along with their billings to warn of future shutdowns. I'm sure that never went anywhere, but it was all I could do.

Anyway, two nights ago, same thing happened. Blew through another APC backup system because of another round of "scheduled maintenance." Naturally, it's below my deductible; but even if it were above my deductible, I wouldn't file a claim for fear of a rate increase. And since I have no recourse with the power company, I'm out another $350. Granted, it's not a lot of money, but it's an additional amount that I could have invested in equipment, advertising, supplies or my employees.

For all the never-ending rate increases, the before mentioned lack of competition, the performance & retention bonuses to the upper management of these companies, and now the money I have to spend on new equipment, I just don't see how things could be worse if these utilities were owned by states and local governments. I'm not trying to go political here (really), but I have no recourse against the current system, so why again is this situation better? Isn't our national power grid already a mess, requiring billions and billions of dollars to modernize? Isn't that $50-to-$100 billion dollars coming from rate increases and local & state tax structures? Again, how could be this be worse if it was publicly owned?

Maybe this belongs in a "rant" section of Craig's List, but I figure you guys for a much better educated lot than that crowd. Can anyone explain to me why I should still have a smile on my face and confidence in deregulation after dumping $700 down the drain? Thanks...

 

[wwillson]

Any insight from APC as to why the power outage would fry the UPS? It really isn't supposed to work that way.

Wayne

 

[Jim 5]

This is not legal advice, but my suggestion around strategy might be helpful, if you are certain the outages actually caused the losses to your APC's.

Send a demand letter laying out why their notification was inadequate and list your losses. Advise them, as you have suggested that the least they could have done to assist you and customers like you to avoid losses like these would have been simply to advise you as a part of their regular billing when the disruptions would occur.

Advise them that just because they have technical compliance with the law, it doesn't mean they have lived up the to standard of corporate responsibility expected of a reputable company like Avista.

Advise them that you have not received a satisfactory response from the customer service representatives.

Close the letter with the statement that you would be willing settle this matter once and for all, and with complete confidentiality for the cost of your 2 APC's. Be polite and reasonable in all your dealings with them.

Finally, find out the address of the head office of Avista in your state and address this letter to Avista at that address Attention: Legal Department.

If you do this, they may just send you a cheque and a release/confidentiality agreement to make the matter go away. The attornies will be forced to look at this and deal with you, and their time will rapidly exceed the value of your APC's. At this point it's cheaper to pay you a modest amount, unless they take a stand that they won't pay out matters like this out of principle. My guess is that approaching it this way will provide your best chance of recovery. If you are successful, comply with the agreement you had to sign.

This is all FWIW, however, I am the lead attorney for a large competitive electric/gas utility company operating in a deregulated marketplace. Take my suggestion for what it's worth, but my experience may have some value to you.

 

[Julian]

The only arrangements I'm aware of are where you can choose to use power at off-peak times for lower rates, or in some cases (say, for people with solar panel equipped buildings) you can actually sell electricity back to the grid. Maybe someone else could tell you more about it. Illinois passed the "Electric Service Customer Choice and Rate Relief Law" a few years back in an effort to deregulate, but nothing has basically changed for me. You can read up on it here if you want, not sure how things work in the "PNW". Otherwise it sounds like you basically hit the nail on the head about your situation. Sorry.

 

[Mustang_Cougar]

Quote:
Any insight from APC as to why the power outage would fry the UPS? It really isn't supposed to work that way.

Wayne


It's funny you mention that, as I had my wife bring home the latest failure and I'm going to call APC customer service later this afternoon. Hopefully they'll agree to see the unit; I'm into this for two units already, so I might as well send it off to them (at my expense) so they can diagnose what's going on.

BTW, it's an RS 1500VA LCD (120v/865w).

 

[Mustang_Cougar]

Jim,

Thanks for your suggestions, not to mention the time you put into that. I've got an acquisition attorney who owes me some services in trade, so I might ask him to craft a letter on my behalf. A nice letter...

Also, I've got a Rotary Club meeting I have to go to next week (I'm the youngest member by at least twenty years of age) and I'm going to float my story, see if I can stir further descension. Perhaps I'm not the only one who experienced a business loss as a result of these maintenance upgrades.

 

[Gary Allan]

How can you deregulate electricity. All the local utility does is lie and reorganize their costs structure to wrap around the conditions. Going to another supplier would have netted me $12 on a $210 average bill that still put it at the 3rd highest utility in the lower 48. So I'm charged 2.8x instead of 3.0x what others outside of my distribution pay. So much for deregulation.

Remember, figures don't lie ..but liars sure do figure.

 

[simple_gifts]

Quote:

Thanks for your suggestions, not to mention the time you put into that


This is what makes this a great board. Professionals even outside the oil world offer their sage advice... Thanks Jim.

 

[greenaccord02]

"The attornies will be forced to look at this and deal with you, and their time will rapidly exceed the value of your APC's. At this point it's cheaper to pay you a modest amount, unless they take a stand that they won't pay out matters like this out of principle."

That's slick, Jim.

 

[Kruse]

Originally Posted By: wwillson
Any insight from APC as to why the power outage would fry the UPS? It really isn't supposed to work that way.

Wayne


My post is probably getting slightly off topic.....but has anybody ever got money out of a computer/software company? My house was directly hit with lightning about 5 years ago. I lost a computer, a computer monitor, a VCR and a few other small items. The reason I mention everything is because it hit through the whole house and items were fried throughout the house. Our computer system was on one of those "$60,000 guaranteed protection" surge arresters.
They wouldn't stand behind it because they said their surge protector was working okay. They told us that static electricity killed everything in the house. Now that may be true, but everything in the house that was not plugged into an outlet was okay. I wonder if they do any payouts whatsover.

 

[Gary Allan]

How did you hook it up?

I just plugged it in.

THAT'S IT!!! You screwed up.

 

[javacontour]

Originally Posted By: Kruse
Originally Posted By: wwillson
Any insight from APC as to why the power outage would fry the UPS? It really isn't supposed to work that way.

Wayne


My post is probably getting slightly off topic.....but has anybody ever got money out of a computer/software company? My house was directly hit with lightning about 5 years ago. I lost a computer, a computer monitor, a VCR and a few other small items. The reason I mention everything is because it hit through the whole house and items were fried throughout the house. Our computer system was on one of those "$60,000 guaranteed protection" surge arresters.
They wouldn't stand behind it because they said their surge protector was working okay. They told us that static electricity killed everything in the house. Now that may be true, but everything in the house that was not plugged into an outlet was okay. I wonder if they do any payouts whatsover.


Well not computer, but you may have seen my Blue Rhino experience earlier this year.

https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/posts/1464458/

I had a similar experience with NEC for a laptop under warranty. It had a bad battery and was still covered under warranty. I knew the battery was bad, so I asked if they would ship me one. They said no, I had to send them the laptop. I even asked if they would cross ship me a battery if I gave them my CC# and paid for overnight shipping.

Still no.

I said, I travel all over the country teaching Java, etc and use my laptop for work. I meet about 500 IT professionals face to face in the course of a year. Now I can tell them that I called NEC and they bent over backwards working with me to find a solution that we were both enthusiastic about, or I can tell them what a pain it was to send my laptop back, knowing it was the battery, and how inconvenient NEC support was in my case.

I got a new battery the next day, gratis. And by the way, it was a bad battery.

Sometimes you simply have to sell how the solution you want is in their best interests.

 

[Jim 5]

Originally Posted By: Mustang_Cougar
Jim,

Thanks for your suggestions, not to mention the time you put into that. I've got an acquisition attorney who owes me some services in trade, so I might ask him to craft a letter on my behalf. A nice letter...

Also, I've got a Rotary Club meeting I have to go to next week (I'm the youngest member by at least twenty years of age) and I'm going to float my story, see if I can stir further descension. Perhaps I'm not the only one who experienced a business loss as a result of these maintenance upgrades.


I recommend you talk to your attorney if an outage could damage your equipment, or for any legal advice. But from a practical and strategic perspective, if you spread the issue to a community level, asking the company to pay for your APC's will set a precedent in the community that they won't want to set. The position you'll likely end up in is that you will only get a remedy when everyone else in the community gets a remedy, but only after strenuous opposition by the utility. In other words, once the whole community is involved, they can't make 1 person go away and it's worth their while to deploy considerable resources to fight the issue.

 

[Jim 5]

Originally Posted By: Jim 5
Originally Posted By: Mustang_Cougar
Jim,

Thanks for your suggestions, not to mention the time you put into that. I've got an acquisition attorney who owes me some services in trade, so I might ask him to craft a letter on my behalf. A nice letter...

Also, I've got a Rotary Club meeting I have to go to next week (I'm the youngest member by at least twenty years of age) and I'm going to float my story, see if I can stir further descension. Perhaps I'm not the only one who experienced a business loss as a result of these maintenance upgrades.


I recommend you talk to your attorney if an outage could damage your equipment, or for any legal advice. But from a practical and strategic perspective, if you spread the issue to a community level, asking the company to pay for your APC's will set a precedent in the community that they won't want to set. The position you'll likely end up in is that you will only get a remedy when everyone else in the community gets a remedy, but only after strenuous opposition by the utility. In other words, once the whole community is involved, they can't make 1 person go away and it's worth their while to deploy considerable resources to fight the issue.


Just to be clear, none of this is meant or should be taken as legal advice (for which you should seek the advice of counsel in your jurisdiction). Instead, I just thought the OP might benefit from having a little insight into how a large company might deal with complaints of this kind.

 

[StevieC]

I have a pretty nice server that is attached to an APC and our house has been struck by lightening a few times and the power goes out very often during storms because we are on old power lines in the "rural" parts. Anyways... I have never had the APC fry or the server.

Are your electrical circuits properly grounded?

They might be grounded enough so the "fault" light doesn't come on on your APC but not enough to arrest a surge in the lines like they should be.

Check the plug your APC is pluuged into and follow that electrical line back to the fuse panel and then the fuse panel to the ground and make sure you have a solid connection. If you think your connection might be questionable you could always drive a 8ft solid iron rod into the ground and run a good thick wire from it to your electrical panels casing and/or ground terminal to ensure a good ground.

We had to do that at this house when we moved in because the electrical wires had rotted away from the ground in the garage over the years from the moisture in the concrete.

We drilled a 1" hole into the concrete floor of the garage near the fuse panel. Once we drilled through all the concrete into the dirt we then pounded the rod into the ground until more than 6 feet was buried and the remaining was sticking out. We then took a thick gauge copper wire and attached it to the rod and to the ground terminal of the fuse panel.

 

[greenaccord02]

I maintain a bunch of APC stuff and they usually make good stuff. I don't know about their home line. The commercial stuff is pretty good, though.

 

[ksJoe]

A few years ago I did the "Executive Carpet Bomb" on Progressive Auto Insurance. Go their website, pull their annual report to investors (assuming they're a public company), and get the names of all their executive officers and board of directors. Then make a few guesses for all the email address ([email protected] [email protected], etc). Email your rant to all the email addresses.

Expect most of the emails to bounce back, but some will probably go through and be correct. In my case, the next morning we got a call from a very polite lady who said the CEO wished to acknowledge receipt of our letter and she had been instructed to "handle it". She would be researching the matter immediately and getting back to us soon.

 

[Julian]

Originally Posted By: Jim 5
Instead, I just thought the OP might benefit from having a little insight into how a large company might deal with complaints of this kind.
The "Sentence first! Verdict afterwards." method is designed to mimic the structure of an abusive relationship, which in this case is extremely clever (because it very often works... very well). That's why all these companies do it the same way. They trade your short term acceptance for your long term acceptance (by showing you they do the same), which makes perfect sense when you consider the types of services they're selling and the context they sell them in (being basically monopolies). How can I explain this better? Pretend you're a drug dealer. Someone extends their trust, a compliment to you in some menial fashion because they want to befriend and impress you, even if only superficially (e.g. let's grab a beer, who's that playing right now, that's some nice [censored]). This trust and its reciprocation is then intentionally denied to them (whether or not it was legitimate). You feel bad, but only IF this is done in a way not to make you feel powerless, but in a way that makes their claim of inadequacy or inappropriateness against your actions seem justified, at least in your mind (e.g. thinking to self: yeah, that was a pretty stupid thing to do, but I can do better... I was being nice but I'm not as cool as they are... I was right, but I don't know as much as they do). This short term validation, which was INTENTIONALLY denied, is then displaced by an equally intentional token of long term acceptance (e.g. blowing off their initial effort as inadequate or misplaced, but then showing them that you accept them anyway by coming back and overlooking it). [censored] that. I can't believe this wasn't clear to me before (in this way at least).

Now as far as this shaking out from a cost:benefit standpoint, I'm sure there are designated "breaking points" at which they are supposed to comply with legitimate demands in some form or another, because this method has to be applied as a whole within a structure and not in a more immediate sense to keep people from seeing it (and in seeing, then adapt). Amazing. Now where else would you ever see that kind of thing?

 

[The_Jeff]

As a matter of historical perspective many states consider electricity a "convenience" not a necessity and therefore they don't have to have it set up to "lifeline" reliability.

 

[Julian]

We've got a generator.

And a fireplace.

And lots of wood.

And a cabin.

And lots of guns.

And lots of ammo.

And lots of food.

And lots of water.

And lots of intelligence.

Wanna trade anything?

Some lead?