Living in a different country, learning a new culture and a new language is always difficult.
Most of the time living at Sensone I don’t suffer from the stress and strains of “normal” life, however, I don’t know if I am the only ex-pat to feel the strain when dealing with Enel the local electricity supplier.
I now only have to think of Enel and I can feel my blood boil, my shoulders tighten and the frustration of years kept at bay suddenly flow back into my body. Is it me? A question I have been asking myself. Our latest episode with them is actually to help them, we don’t have a problem they do, but do they want to listen – NO!
When you are new you expect a few hiccups, we can even forgive them for adding an extra 30% to the price of the electricity or charging us 600 Euros to change to a higher voltage (probably only a flick of a switch for them) which we had to do because if we tried to use more than two household appliances at once the whole system would blow.
However, I couldn’t forgive them for trying to get an extra 80 Euros to change the details on the account, to take Richard’s name off the contract and to add mine all because I am now the resident and we wanted to qualify for the residents discounted price. But even though the house has always been in both of our names I really couldn’t understand how they could charge so much, a nominal fee of 25 Euros maybe but 80. It didn’t make any difference because the reduction for residents only operates on 3 volts and when we changed ours to 6 volts there is no difference, so the bill still remains in Richard’s name.
With the high winds over two weeks ago and then the snow a tree has fallen down and is now resting precariously on the electricity wire. Now the picture does not do it justice but you can get the idea. I have to drive my car under this every day. If it were to snap, then the problem is not just that of the fallen tree, we would then have a broken live electricity wire on the ground. Surely it is easier to remove the tree than to repair the line.
We are not the only people using this road as it is the main road to Abetaio so it is not just our lives at risk. After checking with our neighbours we were advised not to attempt to cut the tree down ourselves because we could then be in trouble with Enel in the event of it going wrong and the wire breaking, it could be a huge fine for us not to mention if the wire broke whilst we were working then who knows what would happen.
Richard called them over two weeks ago, they weren’t interested (that’s what you get when you speak to a call centre in Rome) they insisted that there was nothing they could do, they didn’t have any local knowledge and without the pylon number and typically, this pylon and all of the proceeding pylons have no number on them. Bearing in mind it is freezing up here and we do have at least eight inches of snow on the ground, they want us to go and find the nearest pylon with a number on it.
Our address, the fact that we are a customer of theirs and a map grid location was not enough to prompt them into action. Surely it is better for them to deal with the situation now that wait for it to become a much bigger problem? Just thinking about the inaction makes me angry and frustrated.
We have now found one of our pylons with a number, it is on a different line to the one in question but it is in the same area, we have even offered to meet them at Renaio and show them the place but all to no avail. So we will try again and again until the matter is resolved but what a palaver.
What do we have to do to save them money and maybe even worse if it were to land on top of someone’s car?
Article by Sensone