Great service from ESB

Phibsboro

Not sure where to post this, but I'd be quick enough to complain so wanted to mention the great service I got from ESB this evening.

I live in an old house, rewired with trip switch board a few years ago. This evening I heard quite a loud "pffft" sound and the lights dimmed. I ran into the living room where the meter is and smelt a burning plastic smell. I thought initally my laptop had exploded but it was still on. I went over to the meter box and it was obvious something had shorted - really strong burning smell and black scorch marks beside the meter. Weird thing was nothing had tripped and everything was still on. Looking at the marks, it looked like whatever had happened was on the supply side of the meter.

This kind of freaked me as it meant turning the power off wasn't really going to help. So I rang the ESB emergency line. This was the start of a lesson in good service. The phone was answered immediately and the lady on the other was calm and reassuring that I wasn't wasting their time. She briefly got me to explain the situation and said she would pass on the details to the on call crew. Within an hour I had an ESB truck outside my house and two lads arrived in. They had a look and figured out what had happened (an old stub wire from a previous storage heater meter was leaning against another wire and had gradually burned/melted its way through the side of the other wire, shorting it briefly). They replaced all the wiring and junctions from the outside up to the meter in a few minutes. And now I'll sleep happier tonight :-)

So all in all excellent service - if only all companies were that responsive.

c

wazzoraybelle

+ 1
Last winter we had an outage at 10pm in storm force winds and within an hour 2 lads in a lorry were out, climbed up a pole in the garden and sorted it out. They were so busy the poor lads couldn't even stop for a cup of tea.

ESB management may leave something to be desired but the crews are indeed remarkable.