Electric Company Fun

I think I blogged about the giant power surge we had a few weeks ago. It left a number of our electrical appliances smoking and/or non-functional. When I called the electrical company to report the problem they told me I should go down to the office to make a claim for the damages to our stuff. I asked if there was anything I should do ahead of time, and he told me to have a list of the equipment and its serial numbers.

Yesterday the kids and I headed down to make our report. We waited to talk to a lady who told us we had to write a letter (which I would have done at home if the first guy had told me). So I sat down to chase after Micah gone wild and write a letter. We were then sent into the back offices to deliver the letter. There we were told we needed a copy of our letter. Naturally this office did not have a photocopier. There was no way I was leaving without getting this done so I sat down to chase after Micah gone wild and write a second copy of my letter. We delivered it and were told that she would send it on to some other party who would then send someone down to personally check on our equipment. Because we have already had most of the repairs done, I wanted to know in whose name we should make out the invoices. But of course this person didn't know. She did, however, give me a number to call.

This is so unfortunately typical of Mexican bureaucracy that I was not even surprised or even that frustrated. I'll have to just keep pushing away at this.

One nice thing that happened with regard to this is that as we were leaving for the electric company office we saw a supervisor truck cruising around. So I stopped to talk to him about our situation. He listened sympathetically and took down our report number. He also gave me his name. He said he was supervising maintenance of the underground lines in this neighborhood (which are in terrible shape) and given our recent issues it might expedite the maintenance of the lines to our house. We will see! In the meantime we bought some heavy duty voltage regulators and surge protectors for our important appliances and computers.