{"id":65,"date":"2007-01-26T22:49:13","date_gmt":"2007-01-26T21:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/?p=65"},"modified":"2010-09-23T05:00:33","modified_gmt":"2010-09-23T11:00:33","slug":"futility-services","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/futility-services\/","title":{"rendered":"(F)utility services"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sigh.<\/em> It looks as though my hope for a painless re-integration into American living may be a tad naive.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m back in Brussels and, having found a house in the U.S., am now trying to get everything connected for when I move in, in a couple of week’s time.<\/p>\n

First up was the electricity supply.\u00c2\u00a0 The previous occupants used a company called Stream Energy.\u00c2\u00a0 They compared favorably with the other providers, so I thought I may as well continue using them.\u00c2\u00a0 So I phoned them up to get the service transferred into my name.\u00c2\u00a0 Nope.\u00c2\u00a0 Can’t do it.\u00c2\u00a0 That would constitute a ‘new service’ (even though they already provide electricity to the house), and they aren’t authorized to provide ‘new service’.\u00c2\u00a0 Their (no-)sales rep. kindly informed me that whilst they couldn’t accept me as a brand new customer, if I was a customer of another electricity provider they could quite happily switch me from the other provider to themselves.\u00c2\u00a0 So their suggestion was that I sign up with another provider, and as soon as that was agreed, call Stream Energy to switch over.\u00c2\u00a0 Brilliant!\u00c2\u00a0 Obviously that’s too much arsing around, even if it wasn’t such an assinine (yes, I know there’s normally only one ‘s’ in asinine; I stand by what I wrote) way of doing business, so I gave up and went back to Reliant, who I was pleasantly surprised to see still had me on record as a customer from\u00c2\u00a0two years ago, and they got me hooked up in a snap.<\/p>\n

Next was the gas supply.\u00c2\u00a0 After the electricity debacle I decided to take the easy option and went with my old provider, Entex.\u00c2\u00a0 These didn’t<\/span> have my previous customer details on record (they’d apparently switched systems in the meantime, and I had been “purged”) but they were more than happy to reinstate me.\u00c2\u00a0 The only problem is that I want the gas connected by the time I move in.\u00c2\u00a0 I arrive in Houston on a Sunday, and will be straight into work on the Monday.\u00c2\u00a0 Entex need to send round a ‘technician’ to perform a safety inspection, but can only give me a date and not a time.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not taking a day off work (especially in my first week in a new job) just to sit around for Joe Schmoe to schlep in at 4:59pm, and they’re not willing to work weekends, so it looks as though I won’t be able to get the gas connected at all.\u00c2\u00a0 Ever.\u00c2\u00a0 Or at least not until the wife moves over\u00c2\u00a0 a month later, and I can convince her that she<\/em> has nothing better to do with her life than wait for said gasman.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Ho hum.<\/p>\n

Next on my list was the water supply.\u00c2\u00a0 Sadly, this fared even worse than the gas.\u00c2\u00a0 The company refuses to accept me as a customer until I have paid a deposit, and as they don’t take personal checks, this must be paid by cashier’s cheque (although I guess that should be cashier’s check<\/em>).\u00c2\u00a0 Which I can only get by visiting my bank, in America.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is obviously impossible before I move into the house (see above).\u00c2\u00a0 Besides, Ms. Snotty pointed out, I had to visit their offices in person to sign the supply ‘contract’ (jeez, what’s to sign?\u00c2\u00a0 You turn on the tap (faucet<\/em>),<\/em> water comes out.\u00c2\u00a0 You flush the bog (commode<\/em>) and it goes away.\u00c2\u00a0 What’s so difficult?) so I may as well just bring the cheque in then.\u00c2\u00a0 But I won’t be there until…\u00c2\u00a0 oh, never mind.\u00c2\u00a0 As long as the current tenants leave the cisterns full, I’ll at least be able to go to the toilet three times.\u00c2\u00a0 Or twice, and save the third one for washing in…<\/p>\n

Anyway, at that point I gave up with it all.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s still telephone, an internet connection,\u00c2\u00a0and garbage collection\u00c2\u00a0to sort out, but they will all just have to wait until I get there.\u00c2\u00a0 No doubt I’ll be forced into taking a day off work anyway (I can’t even ‘work from home’ as there will be no Internet connection…) and try to get all of them to come on the same day – and then they’ll probably all<\/span> come round during the 10 minutes I’ve run round to the water company with my cashier’s check, only to find that they’ve closed for lunch…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sigh. It looks as though my hope for a painless re-integration into American living may be a tad naive.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m back in Brussels […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[66],"class_list":["post-65","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-bureaucracy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":248,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions\/248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}