Mercury Energy Unfairly Accused

Let me first of all say that I have no particular axe to grind in this. If a company botches their customer service horribly, they deserve to be punished. However, in this case I think Mercury Energy should be left alone.

THE STORY
In Mangere, Auckland, New Zealand, on Tuesday May 29th, power company Mercury Energy cut off a customer who weren't paying their power bill. However, one of the occupants, a 44 year old woman Folole Muliaga, was on an oxygen machine that ran on electricity. Without it she was at risk. Three hours after the power was cut off, she died. Emergency services were unable to revive her.

So Mercury Energy, and the poor bugger that cut off the power, stand publicly admonished for "killing" this woman. The Prime Minister and other people with a complete lack of perspective are publicly criticising Mercury's actions.

There are multiple versions of the facts floating around about how clearly the family pointed out the risks to the contractor. The contractor says he had no idea of the implications. The family says they made it crystal clear.

SOME REALITY AND PERSPECTIVE

Rather than get into any sort of debate about subtleties like duty of care (which clearly lay with the family), I would like to point out some of the actions the family could have taken in the three hours between the power going off and her death.

1- run an extension cord from a neighbour to plug in the machine
2- take the machine and Folole to a nearby house with power
3- call emergency services immediately
4- obtain a system that requires no power (gas cylinders can drive themselves)
5- take the number 327 bus to Middlemore Hospital

One could readily list a large number of less likely preventative measures, including paying the bill on time, having a backup oxygen system on hand in case of power failure (which could easily last for three hours), a portable power generator, and so on.

An uncle paid the power bill the next day.

So, amongst all this fuss and bother, suing the power company for something that is utterly preventable is completely ridiculous. Other examples would be:

1. Suing a water company when you leave your baby in the bath, unattended.
2. Suing a gas station when you run out of gas, because they should have squeezed more petrol in the tank (or perhaps the car manufacturer for not making a larger gas tank)
3. Suing the postal service for delivering a letter containing bad news.

I could go on forever. I do not believe that public sympathy is remotely in line with what is being reported in the press.

Some questions:
a) Is Mercury Energy a healthcare provider or a charity NO
b) Could they have assumed the family would take some mitigating action YES
c) Was the death preventable? YES
d) Who had the most control of the situation? The Family!

Internet Service Providers

People usually get ADSL, aka "broadband", to get faster access to the internet. Not surprisingly, if the speed of the connection drops, you want someone to do something about it.

I notified Xtra that my line speed had dropped to 192kbps. It took 12 hours to get an automated response, which informed me:
"Your email has been forwarded to our Xtra Technical Support team. Due to the high volume of emails the Xtra Technical Support Team is currently receiving, we may not be able to respond to you for up to 5 days.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused, and appreciate your patience. If you wish to call the Xtra Technical Support Team directly, please call 0800 22 55 98, option 2, option 1, option 1."

Having spent enough time on the phone in customer service hell, I would not remotely consider calling them.

It is not five days since I received that email. Five working days.

I wonder if anyone has ever considered the fact that the very name ISP includes the words "service provider". In itself, that could be considered a breach of the Fair Trading Act.

There seems to be a widespread view by most large companies that losing a few customers isn't the end of the world because they have plenty of others. Tell that to Pizza Hut.

Still, I shouldn't complain. I know someone who was told by their technician to reset their router to factory settings then hung up on them. Not a great result.

Goodbye Sky

With the arrival of Freeview, a digital tv broadcast in NZ, I did not see the point in paying Sky TV $20 per month just in case I wanted more. I called to cancel, and they told me I had to give them 28 days notice (what a complete crock). Apparently that is buried in the terms and conditions I have never seen.

Anyway, since I attempted to cancel the service, I have received two rather feeble letters from them. The sentiment expressed in them is "we miss you, what went wrong" in a really cheesy way. I don’t really see the point in sending me such mail when the only contact method mentioned is the 0800 number. As an about to be ex-customer, I can’t imagine why I would want to ever call that number and try to find a real person that actually remotely cared about why I have stopped. The very concept seems quite ridiculous.

I think they need to consider whether these awful win-back attempts are producing results other than the opposite of their intention. It is exceedingly close to harassment.