Last night we had our first real
taste of customer service in a semi-emergency.
It was pouring rain when the
main circuit breaker shut off–nothing we could do would make it turn back
on. So we got out the yellow pages and called the very first electrician
listed at 11PM on Friday night.
Carlos answered. Chris
explained the problem. Carlos told him there would be additional circuit
boxes throughout the house, and that undoubtedly there was a major short
circuit on one of the that was not letting the main breaker come back on.
Within minutes we found the breaker
boxes, there were three of them, and turned off all the circuits. Sure
enough the main breaker would function now.
Then as instructed, we turned the
circuits back on, one at a time, until we found the single short circuit.
It again caused the main breaker to go off, but as soon as we turned of the
single bad circuit, the main breaker functioned as before, and we had no
further interruptions. Just no electricity in a few places.
The cost, thus far: nothing.
Carlos just visited us. It
appears that some of the outside wiring is very bad. As we are not
seriously disrupted by one circuit being off, Carlos will email us a proposal
to fix everything, and will detail the cost, so we can get it approved by
the landlord.
The cost after his visit:
still nothing.
I'm impressed. This is the kind of problem that
always turned into an expensive nightmare in Costa Rica–I guess they haven't
figured out how to “sock it to the gringos yet”; maybe their culture
is such that they never will.
Too easy–too normal; I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.
