Well

Earlier today our neighbors lost their power, the lines came down and were blocking the street. Our power stayed on until the lineman came out to fix the problem and had to bring us down to reconnect them.

This was for about 2 hours, well after that time they only reconnected one phase so only half my house had power. I figured OK they will correct it before they leave as I did inform the lineman that we were out as well when I saw them. After a little while I watched the truck drive off. So I call them and get their automated system and report that my power is out.

For thoes of you that have never used it you just go through a lot of voice prompts and at the end the machine states that your problem has been reported, have a nice day and hangs up.

Now 5 hours after I reported this no one had still shown up, so I call the system again and instead of speaking or hitting 1 I just mumble into the phone and then am transfered immediatly to an operator. Who looks it up and sees that there hasn't been any reported problems for my phone number even though the stupid system had said it was. Within 10 minutes of talking to the operator, I get a call from the dispatcher and 30 minutes after that the lineman shows up and climbs the pole and connects the second phase.


Moral of the story, don't speak english or spanish into the stupid automated phone systems and you may acutally get to talk to a live person.