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shannon_aThis morning I woke to find it 57 degrees in our house.
Our gas went off yesterday morning, following the discovery of water filling the gas pipeline for us and our neighbors. And then PG&E was out there working throughout yesterday afternoon and into the night. High-powered lights went on as darkness fell and the friendly workers kept working, all the way up to our bedtime.
I'd been impressed at PG&E's understanding of how problematic it was to have gas out in the winter.
But now it was morning and they were ... gone. The streets were empty, with big metal plates covering where they'd dug five-foot holes last night.
We'd been promised that they'd get out gas back on when the problem was fixed, but there was no sign of anyone doing ... anything.
I called PG&E around 8am to ask for status and they said, "Well, the workers had to go home and sleep," like they weren't a multi-billion-dollar company who has 24,000 employees. And there were no updates in their status file following the discovery of water in that gas main yesterday.
I was frustrated and flabbergasted. We had no idea if PG&E had fixed the problem or if they'd be back after "sleeping". We had no idea if they were waiting for parts or if we were waiting for someone to come turn on our gas.
So, we waited. We were given no other option.
I asked Kimberly to call a few hours later, and she got little more out of PG&E. Then I talked to our neighbor J., which got me the first lie from PG&E about when things would be repaired: he'd been told somewhere between 8 and 12.
So, around 2.30 I called again, with the temperature hovering around 59 in the house, as it had been all day (but warmer in the dining room, where Eric, Sam, Mike B., and I were by now playing Curse of the Crimson Throne, surrounded by two heaters, both imported from friends houses).
The first person I talked to on our third call to PG&E blew me off and sent me back to their main menu for an option that didn't exist. The third, seven and a half hours after I woke up to an empty street, actually took the time to call dispatch and find out what was going on. For the first time we got confirmation that the problem had been fixed in the night (meaning that customer service rep this morning, who told me the workers were sleeping before heading back out, was another liar: I was starting to suspect that PG&E custom support lied reflexively rather than figuring out difficult problems, much as I discovered that Comcast did some years ago). And he said that dispatch said someone would be out in an hour.
That'd be lie #2 about times, and at least lie #3 for the day.
Yep, this was increasingly the PG&E who's murdered over 100 people in fires they set in the last two years, the PG&E who just got fined $13.5 billion dollars, the PG&E who was shutting off power all autumn to try and cover up their woeful maintenance of their grid in the last few decades.
The scumbag company I thought I knew before they'd actually worked diligently through the night.
Around 5pm or so, with another time come and gone, I asked Kimberly to make call #4. The Living Room had crept up to 60 or so by this time, with heat blasting in the dining room all day (and us paying a premium to PG&E for the privilege of using those electric heaters while they ignored us and lied to us).
And our fourth lie (at least) from PG&E was that they'd set up a service window with us for sometime between 8am and 8pm to turn our gas back on. Which if they did, they did without actually talking to us. (Not that waiting around all day for them to restore the gas they'd turned off would have ever been acceptable.)
But the truth was that someone finally showed up around 6.30, and in twenty minutes or so got our gas appliance all working again.
Four hours later, our house is hitting 68, but only because I've kept the more efficient of the two electric heaters (a radiator) on while the house heats.
So, basically, PG&E fixed their gas line problem sometime in the night.
And then they took off without doing anything about the houses whose gas they'd shut off, exactly as we feared, and exactly as they said they wouldn't do, and without so much as leaving us a note.
They left us without gas for an additional 14 or so hours, on one of the coldest days of the year, and crapped on us every time we called, either entirely blowing us off or giving us constantly shifting lies about when they'd get that gas back on.
But it took them (*@)#*)#@$ 14 hours just to get someone out for that simple act, even with us (and our neighbors) hounding them all day. I can't even imagine how long it would have taken otherwise. (Maybe no different, maybe another day.)
You need to eminent domain those scumbags, Californians. That's not a company who has any public interest at heart.
And that is how we spent our fifth to last day in California without heat.
But we played three games of Curse of the Crimson Throne while that was going on!
Our gas went off yesterday morning, following the discovery of water filling the gas pipeline for us and our neighbors. And then PG&E was out there working throughout yesterday afternoon and into the night. High-powered lights went on as darkness fell and the friendly workers kept working, all the way up to our bedtime.
I'd been impressed at PG&E's understanding of how problematic it was to have gas out in the winter.
But now it was morning and they were ... gone. The streets were empty, with big metal plates covering where they'd dug five-foot holes last night.
We'd been promised that they'd get out gas back on when the problem was fixed, but there was no sign of anyone doing ... anything.
I called PG&E around 8am to ask for status and they said, "Well, the workers had to go home and sleep," like they weren't a multi-billion-dollar company who has 24,000 employees. And there were no updates in their status file following the discovery of water in that gas main yesterday.
I was frustrated and flabbergasted. We had no idea if PG&E had fixed the problem or if they'd be back after "sleeping". We had no idea if they were waiting for parts or if we were waiting for someone to come turn on our gas.
So, we waited. We were given no other option.
I asked Kimberly to call a few hours later, and she got little more out of PG&E. Then I talked to our neighbor J., which got me the first lie from PG&E about when things would be repaired: he'd been told somewhere between 8 and 12.
So, around 2.30 I called again, with the temperature hovering around 59 in the house, as it had been all day (but warmer in the dining room, where Eric, Sam, Mike B., and I were by now playing Curse of the Crimson Throne, surrounded by two heaters, both imported from friends houses).
The first person I talked to on our third call to PG&E blew me off and sent me back to their main menu for an option that didn't exist. The third, seven and a half hours after I woke up to an empty street, actually took the time to call dispatch and find out what was going on. For the first time we got confirmation that the problem had been fixed in the night (meaning that customer service rep this morning, who told me the workers were sleeping before heading back out, was another liar: I was starting to suspect that PG&E custom support lied reflexively rather than figuring out difficult problems, much as I discovered that Comcast did some years ago). And he said that dispatch said someone would be out in an hour.
That'd be lie #2 about times, and at least lie #3 for the day.
Yep, this was increasingly the PG&E who's murdered over 100 people in fires they set in the last two years, the PG&E who just got fined $13.5 billion dollars, the PG&E who was shutting off power all autumn to try and cover up their woeful maintenance of their grid in the last few decades.
The scumbag company I thought I knew before they'd actually worked diligently through the night.
Around 5pm or so, with another time come and gone, I asked Kimberly to make call #4. The Living Room had crept up to 60 or so by this time, with heat blasting in the dining room all day (and us paying a premium to PG&E for the privilege of using those electric heaters while they ignored us and lied to us).
And our fourth lie (at least) from PG&E was that they'd set up a service window with us for sometime between 8am and 8pm to turn our gas back on. Which if they did, they did without actually talking to us. (Not that waiting around all day for them to restore the gas they'd turned off would have ever been acceptable.)
But the truth was that someone finally showed up around 6.30, and in twenty minutes or so got our gas appliance all working again.
Four hours later, our house is hitting 68, but only because I've kept the more efficient of the two electric heaters (a radiator) on while the house heats.
So, basically, PG&E fixed their gas line problem sometime in the night.
And then they took off without doing anything about the houses whose gas they'd shut off, exactly as we feared, and exactly as they said they wouldn't do, and without so much as leaving us a note.
They left us without gas for an additional 14 or so hours, on one of the coldest days of the year, and crapped on us every time we called, either entirely blowing us off or giving us constantly shifting lies about when they'd get that gas back on.
But it took them (*@)#*)#@$ 14 hours just to get someone out for that simple act, even with us (and our neighbors) hounding them all day. I can't even imagine how long it would have taken otherwise. (Maybe no different, maybe another day.)
You need to eminent domain those scumbags, Californians. That's not a company who has any public interest at heart.
And that is how we spent our fifth to last day in California without heat.
But we played three games of Curse of the Crimson Throne while that was going on!