Tuesday 12th August.....and whilst on the subject of Basil Fawlty.....a Basil type rant actually succeeds......last week I received a notice from UK Power Networks, that they were planning to shut off power for the entire day today, whilst they cut down trees along the line.....faced with the prospect of a Tuesday, 70 odd seniors and then the rest of the casual golfers, all without power for coffee machine, seniors sign in computer, catering, bar, general admin etc etc, I was not best pleased. I was, however heartened by the Helpful information section on the poster which said please note we are unable to provide generators for private use. I took this as a reasonable indicator that a generator would be provided for a business, so I rang them on the number on the poster. After a considerable time listening to lah di dah music, I spoke to a human who said they couldnt help, I needed to ring another number!! I said The poster says, if you have any questions, please call ....if you cant answer any questions why not just put the right number on the poster? Are you just employed to answer the phone and give out a different number? I rang the new number, and spoke to a customer care lady who sounded very helpful but wasnt. No generators. I followed up the phone call with an email, outlining why the planned shutdown would have a major impact on my business and why I needed a generator to resolve that. The following day, I had an email from Care@ukpower which opened with the foll owing statement I am sorry that your power will need to be isolated to the property. I do understand the disruption this can cause, especially when running a business. it then went on to try to justify why a generator couldnt be supplied As planned outages are on-going throughout the year the costs to provide generators to all businesses affected would mean there would be less money to invest in our electrical infrastructure causing the supply to your business to be less reliable. What they actually presumably meant is that they would make slightly less multi billion £ profit if they gave me a gennie.... This did rather annoy me, so I emailed them back....... I am pleased that you understand the disruption that this can cause. How do you understand it? What experience do you have in providing catering for 70 people who will want food and cold beverages on Tuesday 12th August without any power to do any cooking or chilling? Please enlighten me on your experience in doing so, so that I can adequately deal with my obligations to my members. In the event that your understanding of my problem is purely a whimsical nonsensical platitude, designed to make me feel as though you have some vague concerns for the wellbeing of my business, then I require that you escalate this immediately to a senior manager who actually can do something about it. I would hazard a guess that if I was Tesco, or Tesco was next door and on the same power grid section, that a bloody great fleet of generators would be here a week in advance and they they would have been pre tested to ensure that they worked and provided sufficient power. I didnt to be fair, expect to get an answer to that, but the helpful lady who wasnt very helpful is made of sterner stuff....she rang me yesterday to say she had spoken to the man in charge of the tree cutting and he had said to her that we couldnt have a gennie....I thanked her for asking him and asked for his mobile number, as I said I wanted HIM to tell ME that I couldnt have a gennie....she said she couldnt give me his mobile number, so I gave her my numbers and asked her to get him to call me, and if he didnt I would come and talk to him, at the work site, today, seeing as it was less than a mile away, as I wouldnt have anything else to do as my power would be off, so I could allocate all day to talking to him about the requirement for a gennie!!! I didnt, to be fair, expect a response, but he rang me!! To save me writing the conversation down, just re-read the entire section again from the top!! I also pointed out that tree surgeons had been on the golf course over the past two weeks, cutting down trees under the same line, not needing to shut off power at all, and they came to see me to arrange the best time to do it! Senior Man said he would ring me back....which he did, to tell me the tree cutting had been cancelled for today and that he would arrange to come and see me to find out when would be a quiet day that would have the least amount of impact as they had to shut the power off to do the section the need to do......Halleluyah...Basil, I love you!! The proof of the pudding is in the eating....I am sitting here recounting the story to you, 15 minutes after the time when we would have been shut down..... chalgravegolf.co.uk Great Golf, Great Prices and power on all day.....
Posted on: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 07:46:23 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015