So, the good news is that we found a house at the last minute, inked a lease yesterday, and are scheduled to move in on Friday. The news so bad it is actually amusing is that Washington Gas denies that our house exists, and Comcast just informed me that they cannot schedule appointments in the new year because their dispatch hasn't yet released the schedule--at 3:30 in the afternoon on New Years Eve.
Strange days when you develop warm, fuzzy feelings for Pepco, the only utility willing to actually take our money.
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Do they deny the house exists, or are you living in an illegally divided house? Sometimes I think half the rooms in DC are unauthorized apartments.
It's a single family house that's been there for at least 100 years. They just screwed up.
One would assume that this type of problem would be relatively easy to fix; after all, the gas company must add newly constructed residences all of the time. As a practical matter, who cares if the house was there for 100 years or built yesterday?
so how did the previous tenants get gas/electric/phone?
Had the same problem, but here they had to hook me up and then waited 3 months to bill me.
It's not atop an old Indian burial ground, is it?
I realize that the snafus with the utility companies are just icing on the cake that is moving but.... So you'll live for a few days without cable. Surprisingly many people do it everyday and just a few years ago everyone did it. Gas is nice to have for things like cooking, heat and hot water if they are gas fired but you can get by for a few days with the microwave and an electric frying pan - it make a passable hot plate. . . and chances are very good, unless the landlord likes frozen pipes, that the utilities are still on.
So you'll live for a few days without cable. Surprisingly many people do it everyday and just a few years ago everyone did it.
Ehm, call it a hunch, but this may affect the hostess' Internet access as much if not moreso than her television viewing habits, and a portion of her job seems to be based around telecommuting. It would be one thing if they had said "We can schedule you for Monday the fifth" and she was complaining that it was too long, but when the cable company takes advantage of their regulated oligopoly to be incompetent at providing connection to a service, that's something else. Especially since about 7 or 8 out of every 10 telecom providers tends to do it in spite of the fact that the physical infrastructure is already existing right up to the building where service is desired.
We wouldn't be able to tell the difference anyway, given how infrequent and frankly piss poor the posts have been.
Happy new year!
Um, not to be cliche, but "follow the money." Your gas utility does all of its billing based on the meter number. Find the meter--the number will be visible. Armed with that meter number, go back to the gas company--they will say "oh, STEPHENSON Place; we thought you said Ted Stevens place!"
Same thing is true for other utilities--find the meter, if there is one. Otherwise, find the pole number of the utility pole you connect to (i.e. for your Comcast service). Almost certainly PEPCO will own the poles--but anybody placing a wire on a utility pole has to pay rent to the owner, so all of the utilities pay careful attention to pole numbers and how they map to customers.
Otherwise, find the pole number of the utility pole you connect to (i.e. for your Comcast service).
Wouldn't DC's utility lines be underground?
Wait, weren't you supposed to move like 2 months ago? What happened? And why did you choose to live in a house with a roommate? Wouldn't you prefer to be by yourself?
It can't be much worse than the experience my family had in New Zealand. The telco gave my dad the runaround for a couple of weeks before admitting that their system thought his house didn't exist. Then they blamed it on their largest competitor, which controls most of the physical telecom infrastructure in NZ, and the competitor gave my dad the same runaround. Frustrated, my dad switched his service to the competitor, since at least it owned the cables going into the house. He got his phone and internet access the next day.
I cut the gas off to my Manhattan apartment a couple years ago, then last month got a one-month bill for $2,300 plus a cut off notice from Con Ed.
After I called they sent a guy out to read the meter. His diagnosis: "Yup, it hasn't changed in two years. Who knows how these computers work?"
Mouse, but of course we all realize she telecommutes most of the time. And needs high speed access so she can surf news websites. And if there is no internet access at her house she can probably do that at her employer's offices. I think they are someplace in D.C. :-) It's not like she would have to get on a plane and go to Outer Mongolia. As in interim measure she could, I realize this is highly erratic for big cities, she could talk to her neighbors and arrange something temporary. WiFi comes to mind but they could also sling a cable out the window for a week.
Comcast is lightly or unregulated but the gas electric and phone are much more highly regulated. Get the meter numbers and call the Public Service Commission. They have, or should have, pleasant people there whose job it is to make life very very unpleasant for idiots working for the gas, electric and phone companies. Might not want to do that until another round of calls to the companies and speaking to supervisors if the agent who answers the phone cannot help you. Get names and telephone extensions and pass that on to the PSC. Write it all down and and send a lovely letter on high quality paper to the address in the SEC filings, not the address for customer service, to the president of the company.
In the mean time is the water gas and electric still on? The place isn't habitable without them..
http://www.dcpsc.org/
"Wouldn't DC's utility lines be underground?"
When I lived in D.C. (far Northwest) in the 1970s utilities ran through the alley behind the homes on a street. All above ground.
I doubt utilities would be underground in areas closer to the Federal Triangle--the water table would be too high.
And even when utilities are underground, there will be transformers and labels on manholes. Find the numbers, and call the utility. They absolutely can correlate a pole number (what they call it, even when it's a manhole) to a customer.
These problems are world-wide, and not dependant on your economic system (though slightly more Kafka-esque under Soviet communism).
In your situation, the key question to ask the Washington Gas supervisor is "If my house does not exist, can I just turn on the gas and you will not bill me?"
The key question for the ComCast supervisor is "Do you want to lose yet another customer to the competition?"
It is sheer cruelty to leave them with the impression that their answers may have been recorded; but it can work.
Well, this is obvious, but you are dealing with Washington, D.C. There is nothing efficient or well-run there. Nothing. Can't wait to see what happens with the inauguration. That should be a Grade-A Event.
oh yes, should be very interesting.
Don't worry.
The free market will take care of it....
maybe...
What's the deal with the closed comments on the previous thread? I get you have control over the debate, but it seems very unlibertarian... if you don't want to be a part of the debate and just want to say your piece and end there, you did so. But it seems odd to deny anyone the opportunity to respond to your thoughts and basically state that you have the last word and leave it at that (while acknowledging there is no "last word" and its a never ending exchange). I actually look forward to reading different foreign policy points of view.
Good luck with the move today, I hope that Comcast and Washington Gas were able to straighten things out for you.
Umnnhhh....Comcast is on the verge of bankruptcy, and their "schedule problems" are endemic. Daughter had the same problem, almost un-ending, in Madison, WI.
You sure this isn't a magical house that isn't apparant to us Muggles, or indeed to anyone who isn't in on the secret? Like Grimmauld Place in Harry Potter?
I love trying to argue stupid things like this to a bureocracy. "Yes, it exists. I've been there! I can take you there and show you!" And then they insist on what their computers tell them.
I think that some companies live in their own alternate universe, which is similar enough to ours to make sense, but has differences (like houses in our world that don't exist in theirs), so that it gets maddening to deal with them.
Comcast just informed me that they cannot schedule appointments in the new year because their dispatch hasn't yet released the schedule--at 3:30 in the afternoon on New Years Eve.
Ah, looks like they've been bitten by the dreaded Y2K9 problem.
I switched to Comcast this summer when I got rid of my land line and thus couldn't get DSL from the phone company anymore. They wanted to charge me $2 extra per month for a wireless modem/router, which I could have lived with, even though the phone company included it as part of the regular service. What I couldn't live with, though, was the $150 fee to have the wireless network "installed" on our computers. I tried to negotiate, but there was no way they would waive the fee and let us have wireless, so I told them no thanks. Luckily I was able to get a hold of a compatible wireless router and just do it myself for free. But, yeah, another example of Comcast's poor business practices.
Just say 'No' to Comcast. The company has poured millions into an advertising campaign (Double Play/Triple Play/the Slowskis) to win new customers, while doing little (or nothing) to upgrade its network to handle the added demand. Call today to sign up and you'll be waiting three weeks for a service appointment. That assumes the cable guy shows up during the appointed 2-3 hour window. When the service is connected you won't come close to their advertised 7mbps download speed. Forget streaming video, because Comcast will pull the plug on you after 5 minutes (Google "Comcast and bandwidth throttling"). God help you if you ever experience a billing error.
I have found it remarkably easy to live without cable television, but your choices for high speed internet will be very limited. It will be nice if/when WiMax comes to Washington DC because then there will be legitimate competition.
Sorry for the Comcast rant. I only talked to one person there--a regional supervisor--who wanted my business. It is little wonder the US lags far behind the rest of the world on broadband speed and access. ('Broadband' under the FCC's definition is 768Kbps. Insert joke -here-.)
http://www.itif.org/index.php?id=142
For those who wonder at the state of broadband in the USA, you might find the report above interesting.
KIA@7:48pm
I assume that you are saying that by virtue of D.C. being inefficient, then all inaugurations, which are in the same place, were not efficient or well run?
But of course that straw assertion (of mine) might be invalid?
So what is the actual factor that should lead to this inauguration coming off particularly badly in contrast to others? The number of people visiting? One's own observation/political bias? A sudden detioration in public services and performance?
Re: The problem with Israel-Palestine blogging
Blogging about it while claiming to not blog about it ('And I don't ever blog about it') is like me right now, commenting on it without commenting on it.
The rhetorical device, for reference, is called *praeteritio*. =P
They read and remember your comments regarding CL lighting.
I don't get this. After living several years in Europe, I find America to be a marvel of efficiency by comparison.
It took us six weeks to get basic phone service in Madrid and there was no domestic broadband. Telefonica could only get one phone to work in our house. We had to routinely change Internet Service providers when ADSL did not work. It would take a week or more for a repair person to come out and even then he was usually incapable of fixing the problem. There was no such thing as pro-rating the days or hours you were without service. Luckily the tech for my husband's office was willing to make house calls. Mobile phones are big in the rest of the world, because basic phone service is so bad.
GE was willing to foot our hotel bills for several months while gas problems were resolved at our house before we moved in. This was after the boiler blew up on my husband and a holding tank on the roof exploded, which left a hole in the ceiling and water running down our stairway. The stairs and floor were marble, so damage was not as bad as it might sound. The good thing about Spain, no plastic, all stone; it's Flintstone country.
France is a bit better. The Spainards found it amusing that we had 3 computers and extra screens. Don't even ask about cable TV.
Pamela,
I love Spain, love vacations there, but I'm not the least bit surprised that: construction/safety was sketchy in a variety of areas, and service was slow.
I think those two things epitomize Spain. I think generally most people in Europe love Spain but roll their eyes when it comes to talking about most Spanish infrastructure.
Megan, I've got an even better one for you: getting my phone hooked up via British Telecom when I was in London. No, phone wasn't hooked up. Hmm, we turned it on yesterday, will have to send someone out tomorrow.
Turned out that when the old victorian house had been divided up into apartments and supposedly fitted out with heat, electricity, hot water, and phone cables, no one had ever actually bothered to see if the stuff ending in the cable box right INSIDE the massive oak front door was connected to the cable network box OUTSIDE the massive oak front door....
BT went through a lot of drill bits that afternoon, but they finally fixed it.
Megan, I've got an even better one for you
Two days to get your phone hooked up? That's not exactly a horror story.