Perpetual Ruminations

Incompetence Runs Rampant

It's been an interesting day. I got a call shortly after eight about them coming out to change a power cable on the boiler. I got everything moved and ready, then at about ten they called back, the part was for someone else, mine wasn't there yet.

Noon, they called again, it was here. One cord, two wires in it, factory sized with connectors on one side, a four-prong plug on the other. How long could it take to change it?

Instead of removing the old one and installing the new one, they cut the end off of the old one and spliced the plug from the new one with wire nuts, and it still took them a half hour.

It's a boiler, you know, high heat, water, steam. Not the best idea for an open wire connection; it's why they sent an entire cable instead of just the plug. It wasn't the regular guy, it was a couple of young guys (kids to me).

After, it would not ignite. They pulled out phones and started looking for reasons, what the error code meant, and so on. I already knew what the code meant, it indicated the connector they put on wasn't working, and the regulator wasn't opening. But would they listen to me?

The new cord had a red wire and a green wire in it, the old one was black and white. they hooked the red to the black and the green to the white, which I knew was wrong, the schematic plainly showed the black wire was ground and the white was power. Again, even after showing them the schematic, they insisted I was wrong. They ended up calling the tech number for the boiler.

I didn't say anything, even though they had the phone on speaker and the tech informed them that they shouldn't have spliced the plug to the wire, as it will corrode, he also explained that the green wire should attach to ground and the red to the white power wire from the old cord.

They switched them around and guess what? Yeah, it works again. It took those clowns all afternoon, but hey, at least we have heat. Just in time, too. It's snowing and it's cold. We are in a severe winter storm watch with possibilities of blizzard conditions until Thursday afternoon, and the temperature will barely get above zero with lows near fifteen below.

As they were leaving, the dopey one tells me to keep the electric heaters until after the storm, just in case we lose power...