Graham says:
I heard a Con Ed commercial today on the radio, in the NY area. Thankfully, you may now report that you have no electricity, online.Ya know, for those times when you have no power, but your computer and internet access are not affected.
This should be sponsored by Starbucks, because that’s where you’re going to use it.
Report an Electric Service Problem/Check Status [ConEd]
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Let’s all agree that this is just one more option to report outages. Whether or not it’s the most effective, intelligent, or efficient isn’t really a huge issue.
I’ll admit, though, that at first I thought it was really dumb until I thought about it a bit. I wonder if ConEd did as much thinking.
Last time the power went out at work, I used my gasp laptop and cellphone to get online. I reported an outage and got a estimate for service to be restored!
I use a broadband card in my laptop when the power is out, as people have mentioned.
This happened to me a couple weeks ago. I lost power in the middle of the day, called (on cell phone), while on hold the message said I could report this outage online. Not everyone has a laptop or enough battery back up time to do more than shut the computer down.
After finally getting someone with a pulse on the phone. She asked, “Are you sure you lost power? e aren’t reporting an outage in your area.” I said I’m reporting it now. And I’m sure I have now power anywher in my house.
Turns out, a tractor trailor clipped the power line as it dangled across the road. They said they could tell this was a problem for a while and it would take 6-8 hours to fix and get power back.
My neighbor told me this has happened several times before and they still refuse to run the power line under ground instead of dangling it across the road.
Luckily, I had a back-up generator or else my wife and 5 month old baby would have freezing.
Same thing here in Jacksonville, FL…. when calling JEA (Jacksonville Electric Authority) they tell you to report no power by visisting jea.com
@statnut: Yeah, not many people have cellphones these days. Plus, standard land-line phones don’t require electricity and usually work during power outages.
For those who think some of us are humorless: Sorry if our senses of humor don’t mesh. C’est la vie.
@chouchou: Duh! I have a laptop, which is usually charged, so I don’t need a UPS or other source of electricity (at least for a couple of hours, long enough to report the outage). Plus, there’s wireless all over my neighborhood, so I don’t need my router.
This is right up there with me needing to call in my meter readings to my power company. It’s an automated system, but for some retarded reason I can only call during business hours.
One last comment on a topic that (per usual) has been beaten to death: The form is for reporting and checking on ANY kind of service need, which may have nothing to do with a power outage.
But Meg and the rest of you are right, this is still downright hilarious.
During a power outage affecting one nearby county, the News Director for the TV station I was working at said “Should we run a crawl (on-screen text, like on CNN) to tell people?” To his credit, he realized how dumb that sounded before anyone said anything.
Consumers are not always informed citizens.
Consumerists are not always informed.
(Message posted from a wireless handheld while waiting
for a limo to the airport)
@acasto:
“I think this even tops the cable company’s message of telling you when you call to say your internet connection is down to check the help section of their website.”
hell yea I called Verizon one day and was on the line talking to the machine and it told me to go to the website and I was saying how the ” ten curse words ” do you go to the site if the internet is down and the guy came on the line saying I know I know how do you go to the site if your internet is down then he said we should really change that.
@clevershark: They have these great little boxes, ingenious inventions, you hook them up to things and they keep them going without electricity. I think they were called “ups” or “downs” or something like that. I’m hoping it will let me keep surfing the tubes when the electric candles go out.
Ah, it’s great when all the lights in your house go out except for the glow of the screen.