Yesterday I was working from home when my doorbell rang. I went to the door and looked out the window to see a large man with a yellow bag standing on my front porch. Since I was home alone, I had no intention of opening my door to this man. No truck in site and no visible identification on him. He took something out of his bag, leaving the bag on my walkway and headed over to the side of my house getting ready to hop my fence.
I banged on a window and got his attention when he told me he was from Oncor. His untucked work shirt did not identify him representing Oncor nor was there a truck in site. His shirt actually had a different name displayed. He said he was going to replace my meter by hoping over my 8 foot locked fence. I called our neighborhood security who confirmed Oncor had been in the neighborhood all week doing this and they had received 100's of calls.
I explained to the worker that 3 years ago when we bought the house we paid to have a digital meter installed since the side of our house was gated and locked, and we didn't need a new one. He said it didn't matter that he had been instructed to replace them all. It took two minutes and he was gone. However, once I went back into the house, my work computer had been shut down and I lost all my work. At the end of the day when I tried to sign back onto my home computer, it was damaged from the sudden power interruption.
It was very unprofessional of Oncor not to warn their customers that they would be doing this work and the fact it may cause problems with certain equipment such as computers. Had I not been home to know what happened, I may have experienced unnecessary and costly computer repairs. I just wonder how many other people this affected. As a common courtesy any company that plans to make repairs or upgrades to for a customer's property should notify the customer first.in fact, it should be mandatory for the safety of the worker if nothing else.
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