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The Prince Of Darkness
I
would like to take up some pages of the Lowdown to relate to you my
recent ‘out of world’ (read ‘even I can’t believe it’) experience
with the Prince of Darkness.
It all started one Wednesday afternoon, around 1.30 pm, when I
needed to find some information on the web for something that I was
researching. Hmm … seems like we’re offline again (this is a common
occurrence; at least three or four times a week, but it is also
another story for which I have no space this month). So I go through
the usual procedure : reboot the wireless, reboot the gateway
computer, reboot my own computer. Still nothing. Get on the phone to
my ISP. ‘Sorry, Zesco is down at Godfrey House’. No point in getting
the blood pressure up; just do something else; keep calm, those
emails that are queued will go eventually and you can continue with
your research later. Glance at the watch, 5.30 already; then 6, then
6.30. No point. Just go home.
Thursday morning. In the office early. Still no connection. Wait
until after 8 because phone calls at 7.15, 7.30 and 7.45 are not
answered. About 8.05 someone answers the phone. ‘Ohhh, it is still
not working? We will dispatch a team to Godfrey House to check’. But
as I said, this is not an article about my ISP, so let me shorten
this. Throughout the day, I would leave my office at intervals, rush
down to the local internet café, send off the urgent emails that
‘had to go’. But my patience was wearing thin and eventually, at 4
pm, I decided there was no other way : check in that cupboard,
scratch out the old modem, find the cables, have the ISP set up a
dial-up facility, install modem on computer, set up a dial-up
connection (if you can remember how) and revert to using the
telephone line. Just getting there at 5.45 when I glance down and
see that we are back on line. The Prince of Darkness has averted
another black night for Godfrey House!
Friday morning. ‘What a relief that our communications are back’.
Happy as can be; life is good. Until 3.30 pm that is. Blank screen
in front of me. The Prince of Darkness has struck again. Check
around, it is only part of the building. Call the landlords who
also check. It is definitely a Zesco issue, two of the phases are
down. Phone Zesco, report it, (don’t forget to be armed with your
landlord’s account number otherwise they won’t accept the report)
and get their reference number. OK, it’s Friday, I had a lot of
things that I hoped to get done, but I’ll have to do them over the
weekend; let me do some work which does not need the computer.
Phone Zesco Call Centre every 30 to 45 minutes. They have enormously
pleasant people working there : they are polite, they are efficient,
but they can tell you nothing unless you want to hear that your
report is in the system. Finally the light disappears so you figure
you might as well go home after making sure that everything in
unplugged because who knows what surges your equipment might be
subject to overnight.
Saturday morning. Get into the office early again; I’ve got a heap
of work, deadlines to meet; have had such a disastrous week
including getting stuck in Chipepo area for a day, unable to get out
because of rivers coming up over the bridges. Still no power, still
no light. Phone Zesco. ‘Please, we have been off since yesterday,
make sure your technicians come quickly’ ‘Yes madam’. Leave the
office, but leave the door to the main distribution board unlocked
and go off and do some other work. Come back a while later, still
nothing, phone Zesco. ‘Yes madam, our technicians will be coming’.
Go off, do something else, come back, still no technicians. Go
through the same routine. Go out to Chelston to do some work there,
come back just after 5 to find that some bright spark has locked the
outside door and after that, the technicians had finally arrived and
had to leave again.
Phone the Prince of Darkness, apologise profusely and make an
arrangement to be at the office at 8 on Sunday morning to make sure
that the technicians can get into the building.
Sunday morning, just a few minutes after 8, phone Zesco, explain
what happened the previous day and that you are now in the office
and could the technicians come round. Two hours later, nothing. Then
a member of your staff walks in and you explain the issue of the
power and he says ‘I just saw Zesco at the gate’. You rush out to
find that one of the security guards (the less said about that, the
better) has taken it upon himself to tell Zesco that they can’t get
access to the distribution board and they have now left.
Phone Zesco again, explain what has happened, apologise profusely,
‘please amend the entry in your system to indicate that we are in
the office’ ‘Yes madam, we will do that. An hour later phone Zesco
again, only to be told that the technicians came and could not get
into the premises. ‘Hang on, I asked for this to be amended and was
assured that this would be done’. ‘OK madam, I shall amend it’.
An hour later, another phone call, the same response.
And an hour after that, another call, again, the same response. And
all the time, the hours are ticking away. Better we take some other
form of action. Get in the car, drive round to Zesco. Explain the
situation to the gentleman at the front desk, who, like everyone
else, is very polite and very efficient and makes one feel that
something is really being done; that they really have amended the
entry on your fault, that the technicians now know that there is
somebody there and they will be able to gain access to the premises
when they get there. And that something is really being done for
the people from New Kamwala who are also sitting there because they
have not had power since Friday afternoon either. Don’t be fooled by
this. Call the Zesco Call Centre and ask what is happening : they
will tell you that the technicians went round there and could not
get access to the premises.
By this time, patience is wearing very thin. Ask to speak to the
supervisor. No joy. Start to thump the desk. The only response is
that they call in more security guards. Threaten to barge up the
stairs and go and find the supervisor yourself, but they know full
well that you won’t do this because they would have you handcuffed,
frog marched down to central and probably put in stocks before you
could shout ‘The Prince of Darkness Strikes Again’.
Eventually, in desperation, you go next door to the Customer Care
department and a very pleasant gentleman (whose name I have mislaid,
but it starts with an ‘H’) listens to your story and he tries
speaking to the supervisor and the co-ordinator to try to do
something. He also fails but eventually undertakes to walk round to
the relevant office and see what he can do.
In the meantime, you go back to the other office where the man at
the desk assures you that they have definitely amended your entry in
their system, just as he is assuring the people from New Kamwala
that they have an underground fault and the technicians are working
on it right now. Seems he has forgotten that in this day and age of
mobile phones, we can actually phone people in New Kamwala and find
out if the technicians are there. Or perhaps the tunnels from State
House run to New Kamwala and that is where the technicians are
working on the underground fault? He has also forgotten that I can
phone the call centre upstairs and be told ‘but our technicians came
and the premises were locked’. I don’t think he quite expected to
have my phone almost permanently embedded in his earhole whilst I
shouted ‘tell him that’.
The end result was that after much shouting and yelling on the phone
to the Call Centre, I was finally put through to the supervisor.
Although why we needed the phone, beats me because the level of my
voice was such that if she had poked her head out of her office, she
would have heard me perfectly well through the corridors of the
Zesco building.
And what a pleasure : within an hour, the technicians were there,
they swapped some cables, moved us onto a different phase and we
were all smiling and able to get on with the work we had to do. And
my newly made friends from New Kamwala confirmed the next day that
they too had power restored at around the same time as us. Well
done to Supervisor Chanda.
And so ends that particular saga. But that is not the end of the
saga of my power problems. Yesterday, Friday afternoon, hah! there I
am staring at a blank screen again, for the second time today. Start
the whole process again. And then get out of the office and go and
do some work that needs doing out of the office. On the way back at
around 4, check with the office whether power has been restored. No.
Save some time and phone while you’re on the way to the office (no,
I wasn’t driving myself). ‘Sorry, we can’t check on your fault
because our system is down’ ‘Please can you phone control and ask
them’ ‘Our faults people are there, working on it’ ‘Did you phone
control to check’ ‘No, I know that the faults people are there
working on your problem’ ‘In which area are they working on the
fault’ ‘Makeni area’ ‘I’m not in Makeni, I’m in Kabelenga Road!’
Stay calm, relax, go home and think of the article you can write in
the next issue of the Lowdown. And remind readers that if the
Lowdown gets onto the street late, it is not because of slackness on
your part, but circumstances beyond your control.
But, there are some serious issues which the Chief Prince of
Darkness needs to address. It is wonderful to have an efficient call
centre manned by very polite, seemingly professional people who have
been well trained, but why can’t they at least give callers an
honest and correct answer on what progress is being made on having
the fault rectified. Why do we have to be given a run around each
time there is a problem? If it’s a major fault, tell us how long it
is going to be before power will be restored; if they tell us eight
hours and it’s restored in three, we are going to be suitably
impressed. Why is it necessary to have to speak to a supervisor to
get some action? Why is it so difficult to speak to the supervisors;
they should be more accessible to us, their customers, the people
who pay their salaries every month.
And the most important issue of all : why can’t Zesco get their act
together and make sure that we are not subject to these constant
power outages which, from my layman’s point of view, seems to be
purely a lack of regular and proper maintenance on the
infrastructure and, I am sure, also shoddy workmanship when the
original installation work is done.
How is this country ever going to develop if we cannot get good,
clean, stable power when we need it and where we need it? Think of
the man hours lost during the working week because of power
outages? Can we deduct the cost of this from our next bill that
comes in? I wonder how long it would be before Zesco was bankrupt if
we all did that?
Prince of Darkness : it is time not only to clean up your power, but
also to clean up your act!
And for the consumer : perhaps it is time to invest in your own
generator, because I don’t see anything getting better. In fact,
over the last years, I have only seen it getting worse. But then of
course, you have to be able to afford the fuel for the generator.
Take a look at the comparison of fuel prices in the region in this
issue and see what you think. |
March
2007