Hello John,
I can sympathize with you.
I've spent the last 3+ years dealing with my power utility on the Jersey
shore and I could easily write a book maybe several.
Your fortunate to some degree if I understand correctly from your post your
utility RFI guy actually attempts some repairs. That just does not happen
here. The one and only RFI power company person named "Kit" never ever gets
up on a pole. While he has tried many many times to help, the end result is
that the line crew and their local management are more then inept.
Fortunately, I work from my home office so I was afforded the time of
meeting with Mr RFI often in the past (one year ago that stopped, more about
this later). This is where it stops.
Total lack of internal communications within the utility! No process that
can be identified. It is so bad that Mr RFI (KIT) has requested on many
occasions if I might contact the management / regional offices because he
could not get any cooperation with his own organization.
The outside plant folks would not show up 3/4's of the time to meet on a
pre-scheduled time and place with their own company personnel (Mr RFI).
When they did show up it was coffee, sleep, and joke time that lasted 3-5
hours at a time. When I showed up and enquired about findings I was told "
Oh we can't go up on the pole because we don't have enough people in the
assigned crew here as per union safety rules"!
When I called the executive offices of the power utility after spinning with
this month after month and over multiple years I am road blocked by the
executive administrative assistant making excuses for the line crew and
local management, blaming the RFI guy! That was total hog wash and didn't
make any sense until the light turned on so to speak. As it turns out the
executive administrative assistant was the fiancée now wife of the LOCAL
LINE CREWS MANAGER! Mind you, this is not the same physical office as they
are probably 20 to 30 miles apart. Now we understand the completely flakey
responses from the Exec Offices.
It didn't stop there, oh no - the next call I received was from MR RFI who
stated the EXEC has laid the law down in that MR. RFI is NOT ALLOWED to
communicate with the local outside plant line crew at all as it relates to
interference in my area. Further, I am free to call Mr. Exec Directly.
Well Mr. Exec proceeds to tell me how much money the utility has spent in
the 3+ years (~ $14K) and he is not even sure that they "The Utility" need
to correct this stuff. My retort after being hammered was to suggest that
he should get a refund of his companies $14K since most of that time was
spent buying donuts, cigarettes and hustler magazines. I don't know about
you, but I am not at all surprised that we experienced a multi-state outage
in the North East. You just have to love the work ethic of these folks
starting at the top down. Mr. Exec did not stop there - He indicated that
the utility was starting summer renovation (This was in February as I
recall) and that ALL crews would be tied up for about a year and to call
them back at that time. And one last thing don't call the RFI guy anymore
but you must call into the Customer Service 800 number!
Multiple letters from the FCC over the last 3-4 years mean nothing to them.
Letters from the ARRL mean nothing. Letters to Riley (Nice guy and great
ham) mean nothing in terms of utility follow thru. Letters and calls with
Ed's staff at the ARRL have not produced results and time just keeps moving.
In a recent conversation with Ed Hare W1RFI who heads the ARRL LAB/RFI
department I learned that before I even shared my story he knew word for
word the games, lies, cover-ups and placating that I have experienced. Not
because I told him - because it is the same story all over the country.
It makes me cringe just to think that these are the same people that want to
operate or support data networks via BPL. GOD HELP US.
Regards,
:-[PdV]-:
Peter D. Vouvounas
Vice President & GM
VoIPCO LLC
Ofc: ?732.701.1130
Cell: 732.674.4001
98 Meridian Dr
Brick, New Jersey 08724
Mailto: wb3fsr@comcast.net
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