The federal electric company, CFE, works in ways I do not understand, and sometimes hurts my brain. Of course, a lot of my confusion stems from the fact that I have NOB sensibilities and ideas about how things should be done. I am sure this will change slowly over time, as I become more integrated into my new home and culture, but for now, I am really annoyed.
One of our 110 breakers had gone bad, so we had Regalo out yesterday to fix it. During his troubleshooting process, he went to the roof to inspect the incoming lines, and found that the insulation on one had worn through and the line was corroding. He kindly called CFE for us to report the problem. CFE said they would be here within 24 hours, but since it was 7:00 pm on Saturday night, Regalo figured they would be here within 3 days. In a bizarre show of efficiency, they showed up only 8½ hours later – at 3:30 this morning.
We were sound asleep when Reku started barking at a length and ferocity that I have never heard before. With flashbacks of being robbed, Chuck went springing out of bed to find out what had Reku so bothered. In front of our house was a loud, large, cherry-picker truck with CFE stenciled on the side. What?
As improbable as the scenario was, Chuck put two and two together quickly, and, remembering our last experience with CFE, went running around the house madly shutting everything down and unplugging every electrical cord.
By now, it would be perfectly obvious to anyone outside the house that we are indeed awake, but they used the cherry picker and went up on our roof without so much as a by your leave. I wonder what they would have done if we were one of those houses with roof dogs for security.
One of the guys on the street climbed our gate and reached in to pull our meter, leaning on the doorbell for support the whole time. I'm still not certain why they pulled our meter, since the guy on the roof took out a pair of dikes and cut the electrical line while it was still live. I am not sure I will ever comprehend the Mexican lack of fear when dealing with electricity.
The insulation is bubbled along the entire length of the line, but they only cut out the sections that were actually worn through and spliced in new pieces of wire – with electrical tape. Perhaps they couldn't see the true condition of the wire since it was 3:30 am and dark. Perhaps they just didn't want to work that hard. Regardless, it means I am sure we will be having another visit from CFE in the not-too-distant future.
Although the guy could pull our meter by climbing our gate, Chuck had to go down and let him in to put the meter back and restore our electricity. It's nice to know these guys are working with a solid project plan.
When they were done, they couldn't just leave. They all sat on the wall in front of our house smoking cigarettes. With the very loud truck still sitting there, running. I tried to keep the dogs calm and silently apologized to all of our neighbors. What a great way to start our wedding anniversary.
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|189.174.198.xxx |m-d-Y H:i:s sansYea, we have had our run-ins with those guys. Like 2 hours before our Christmas Eve party when they produced a bill for the month that I needed to pay right then or they were turning the electricity off. The bill was 25,000 pesos. I don't think so. That would be our total for the YEAR, not for a winter month when we were not running ac's. (and most of our appliances are gas) Not to mention we were current on our bill. It took us 2 months and alot of help from a neighbor to get that straightened out. Then again last week I came home to no lights (once again, current on bill) Turns out they were working on a new house next door and in the process of getting theirs turned on, ours got turned off. I asked how, but, of course, nobody could come up with a straight answer. It took a day and a half to get it turned back on. I have someone coming by today to check the wiring out, because even though everything else in the entire house was off during that time, the fridge, computer, and the light above the bar still worked.......
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|SAdministrator |m-d-Y H:i:s jenniferShhesh! Your story makes my middle-of-the-night storm trooper visit seem like nothing! I'm a little more philosophical about it now and can almost laugh about it - almost - but you should have seen the first draft of my post. It was positively dripping acid. I suppose I should be grateful for the quick response.
Sounds like you have some of your electrical wired into a neighbor somewhere...although the fridge continuing to run was a good thing. Let us know what your electrician finds.
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