It’s Always Worse Than You Think

So, as I said last time, we arrived in our new house in Virginia Beach on Tuesday with only a few minutes of daylight, so we only stayed long enough to turn off the circuit breaker (so that the power could be turned on Wednesday).  On Wednesday morning, we arrived fairly early and then proceeded to sit in our powerless house.

Three reasons for this: 1) a package with our new Dyson was going to arrive, 2) we wanted to receive our pile of mail that had been held at the post office and 3) we weren’t sure if we needed to be home when the power got turned on.

#1 went fine.  The Dyson arrived, and it looks pretty awesome.

#2, not so much.  It turns out that Amy scheduled the mail hold to end Thursday instead of Wednesday.  But still no problem – we could wait another day for mail.

#3 was a bit more of an issue.  Around 3PM, still without power, I decided that perhaps I should give Dominion Power a call and see if they knew when the technician would be coming out.  I managed to look up the phone number for their customer support line through Google on my phone, and gave them a ring.  It turns out a hold was on our account – we needed to send in a fax with two forms of ID for our account to be processed.

Fine – we very quickly load the car and drive to the nearest FedEx and send the fax.  On the way back to the house, Amy calls Dominion Power again.

“We just want to verify that you received our fax,” Amy says.  To which the support rep responds that it will take 72 hours to verify any faxed documents.

“And then it will be another 48 hours to reschedule someone to come out?”  Yes, apparently it will.  We’ll be without power for a week.

At this point, we’re both a little irate.  When Amy asks why she needed to send these documents, having not been told this the three prior times we’d called (the first being over a month ago – Dominion Power Failure #1), the rep tells her it is because she gave the wrong SSN when she was ordering.

Except she didn’t.  The problem was that the high-school dropout on the phone when Amy called the first time couldn’t remember more than 2 numbers at a time and wrote her SSN incorrectly into the system 4 times.  Apparently that flagged her account in some way that we needed to provide the extra identification.  Failure #2.

So given all this, why didn’t Dominion Power call us when the system automatically canceled our appointment for something that we didn’t do?  Well, because they don’t do that.  It’s up to you to discover that your house doesn’t have power or if the appointment that you’d scheduled isn’t really happening.  Failure #3.

Now, did I say “a little irate” before?  At this point, it was probably a little more than a little.  Amy quietly and rather angrily explained the situation to the rep at Dominion Power, and to her credit, the rep immediately understood how her company had wronged us several times.  We’re on hold for 5 more minutes.

“Someone will be out tonight.”

So ultimately – redemption for Dominion Power.  They made several mistakes, but ultimately made it all right.  Thankfully.

After we had power, we got to discover all of the little things wrong with the house that we didn’t remember.

1. No power outlets are grounded except in the kitchen.
2. Both bathrooms have giant holes behind the vanity.  Our cat, Neko, is thrilled about this and has already made several attempts to reach wherever they lead.
3. The downstairs bathroom shower head is broken off – as in, there’s a tiny, rusted metal piece screwed onto the threads.
4. The upstairs bathroom sink’s drain was stuck closed, and the shower drain is very slow.  Upon investigating the apparently-but-not-actually metal pipe under the drain, it collapsed in on itself, and now pours whatever water comes down the drain out into the vanity.  The only way to fix it is to replace the lower u-bend of the p-trap, but the thing is attached in such a way that I can’t figure out how to dislodge it (the part I would expect to screw off to remove the u-bend is a metal circular ring).  Not to mention the brown, green, and white powders all around it (which I am assuming are rust and calcium).
5. The ceiling fan in the upstairs bedroom makes an unpleasant thumping noise periodically when it’s running (about every 4 rotations).
6. The air conditioning does not really make it to the second floor, leaving the downstairs freezing and the upstairs warm.
7. Insects.

If you have any advice on what to do for any of these, especially #4, please let me know.

On the bright side, we came home yesterday to find a little green frog attached to our front door.  I thought we should capture him and put him in a terrarium, but Amy convinced me otherwise.