British Gas un-authorised work.

[CaNsA]

Last month, and the month before, British Gas (who supply my electricity) has sent round an electrician to swap out my old style electricity meter for a newer, updated one.
Both previous times i have been in and the spark has said he hasn't got the correct meter to replace it with and said he will return another day.

Got back from the NEC today to find a load of wire cutoffs outside my door and a new meter in the cupboard (outside).

Now for the spark to replace my meter he has to kill the power for about 20 mins which is understandable and wouldn't have been a problem if i had known about it and been able to prepare for it by powering down my PC, shutting down my PVR and making sure the fish tank was at a good temperature.

None of this happened as i was drooling over bikes

Would it be worth phoning up British Gas saying im not bloody happy cos 4 of my 5 hard drives have failed and the PVR is now buggered?

BCF what shall i do?

Cheers

[panrider_uk]

Get decent hard drives and/or a UPS?

Mark
____________________
Current bikes: Honda ST1100 Pan European. Moto Guzzi V85 TT Travel

[Phoenix]

But your hard drives are all fine and so is your PVR, whatever that is. So you just hoping you can scam some compensation?

[CaNsA]

No my hard drives are not fine, 2 have become very noisy and 2 dont show up in the POST.


PVR buggered as it doesnt load the software any more.....

[iooi]

Don't think you will get anywhere.

At the end of the day you knew they were coming at some point to do the work and with it being outside they do not need to make a appointment.

Often when you have a power cut drives on computers play silly buggers. May take a couple of reboots to get it running sweet again.
Same with PVR.

If you are going to complain you need to add in a few dead fish...... Although for a short powerdown i think it will be a wasted effort.
____________________
Just because my bike was A DIVVY, does not mean i am......

[CaNsA]

[UnknownStuntm...]

[Ste]

[MattEMulsion]

Whilst I do think that they should have informed you before they carried out the work and temporarily cut off your electricity I think that you are making a big deal out of the issue.

What would happen (and what would you say then) if the entire power went off in your neighbourhood? Thankfully these days the power 'going off' is a bit of a rarity, but when I was a kid it wasn't exactly uncommon for the power to fail across the local area.
____________________
Yamaha YZF-R6

[panrider_uk]

[CaNsA]

Look guys, my complaint to them is coming from the fact they didn't let me know when they were doing the work on my property.

the quality of my IT gear is not in question here, British Gas' lack of communication is.

If this was an issue that had affected eveyone in my neighbourhood due to UNFORESEEN circumstances then i wouldn't really be that arsed, but it wasnt and i am really pissed off. So Matt your point is made of shit and is not valid in this situation in anyway. But thanks for trying

Ste, My drives are broken because they failed to inform me of what they were doing. They knew when they were doing it but didnt tell me..... so this could have been avoided if they let me know.

[Kickstart]

Hi

Firstly it probably isn't BG changing your electric meter. It will be the meter operator (quite likely the remains of the old regional electric company for your area).

I very much doubt anything is their terms and conditions says anything about not interupting your supply, as this is not exactly an unusual occurance.

Meters need to be changed occasionally. They are recertified every so many years. How often depends on the model of meter, but generally every 15, 20 or 25 years.

I would suspect if it killed the hard drives then they probably died having been turned off after months spinning. And would quite possibly have died in much the same way if you had shut them down in advance.

While you might get compensation if your electricity is off for a substantial length of time, I would doubt you will manage to get anything for this.

All the best

Keith
____________________
Traxpics, track day and racing photographs - Bimota Forum - Bike performance / thrust graphs for choosing gearing

[UnknownStuntm...]

[Ste]

To avoid problems in the future, if anyone says something to the extent of "he will return another day", if you need to know when that will be then ask them to let you know.

My computer and hard disks haven't ever had any problems when there's been a power cut, I don't get why yours would fail when the power went off.

[iooi]

[colin1]

It seems a bit unlikely to me that a hard drive would fail just because the power was cut.

I've quite frequently done a hard reset of a frozen pc, by unplugging the power, and then starting it up again.
____________________
colin1 is officially faster than god

[Inkognito]

[MattEMulsion]

[sickpup]

[Cigaro]

[Kickstart]

Hi

You can kill them, as heavily used drives spinning full time tend to die when they stop. But would expect them to die whether powered down normally or just having the power cut.

All the best

Keith
____________________
Traxpics, track day and racing photographs - Bimota Forum - Bike performance / thrust graphs for choosing gearing

[Cigaro]

Keith> I know it can happen. It's rare though - personally I have never seen a drive fail in that way, and plenty of my customers have had power cuts (sometimes with hard drives that have been operating continuously for years on end).

If anything I'd even go as far as to say that the hard drives are amongst the most reliable bits of modern kit.

The most common things that tend to fail are power supplies, fans and motherboards.

[CaNsA]

[Kickstart]

Hi

Tend to agree they are pretty reliable, but if they are going to fail it appears to be the change of state that causes it.

The old ones that didn't auto park were MFM drives.

All the best

Keith
____________________
Traxpics, track day and racing photographs - Bimota Forum - Bike performance / thrust graphs for choosing gearing

[Kickstart]