P
prideofengland
Been to a job this morning, when the lady rang me last week it was the usual thing, moving into a flat soon, tried to put up a new light and 2 brass switches, now the lights dont work, oh and by the way a couple of the sockets are not working. Bread and butter stuff for the one man band sparky like myself so I allowed a couple of hours for the job.
When I got there I quickly reconnected the fittings and did an IR test, dead short to earth. So asked the lady if she had touched anything else. She admitted that she took down the loft light, had a look bare wires exposed, reconnected but decided now to check all the light fitting, also found a switch with both the wires left out. Anyway reconnected the lights, tested and powered up - all fine.
Next checked the sockets, some wrong polarity, some no earth, the lady had tried fitting some brass sockets, checked all sockets reconnected tested - all fine.
So now ask the lady why are the storage heaters lying face down on the floor and missing the DP switches, she says "well I wanted to decorate behind them, did not realise how heavy they were and let them fall".
Anyway ended up taking 5 hours to get all up and running again, but totally amazed that after trashing the lights - rather than call an electrician, she then proceeded to trash the sockets and then the storage heaters before calling a sparky.
Now I know that Winston Churchill once said "Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." But customers should know when to give up!
When I got there I quickly reconnected the fittings and did an IR test, dead short to earth. So asked the lady if she had touched anything else. She admitted that she took down the loft light, had a look bare wires exposed, reconnected but decided now to check all the light fitting, also found a switch with both the wires left out. Anyway reconnected the lights, tested and powered up - all fine.
Next checked the sockets, some wrong polarity, some no earth, the lady had tried fitting some brass sockets, checked all sockets reconnected tested - all fine.
So now ask the lady why are the storage heaters lying face down on the floor and missing the DP switches, she says "well I wanted to decorate behind them, did not realise how heavy they were and let them fall".
Anyway ended up taking 5 hours to get all up and running again, but totally amazed that after trashing the lights - rather than call an electrician, she then proceeded to trash the sockets and then the storage heaters before calling a sparky.
Now I know that Winston Churchill once said "Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." But customers should know when to give up!
