From Bad to Worse

Yesterday I received a call from one of my tenants who told me the gas company was there and that they were shutting off the gas. I asked to speak to the gas technician who was there. He told me that they were turning off the gas for the first floor (George) who owes them a lot of money and hasn't paid his bills. I told him that George is being evicted, so that doesn't surprise me. I told them to make sure they turn off the correct meter and not the meter for the second/third floor. He said they are certain they turned off the correct meter.

I get home later that evening, only to find the hot water tanks for the second and third floor not working. The tenants in the second and third floor call and tell me their gas stoves are not working. Great. The person who's been paying his bills (me) has no gas, while the person who owes all the money (George) still has his gas turned on. So I call the gas company. It's 10:30pm, so the customer service desk is closed. I speak to someone on the emergency desk. After explaining the situation she tells me she will send someone out and they will be here within a few hours. I told her to have them call my cell phone when they arrive so I can bring them into the basement to see the problem. My phone has bad reception in the basement, so rather than risk missing their call, I wait outside in front of my house for them to arrive. Midnight arrives, and still no one. I decide to call back and see if they really are coming tonight. This time I'm told there isn't even any service request entered in! She tells me that the emergency desk it only for gas leaks so she can't do anything for me, and to call back tomorrow morning at 7am and speak to a supervisor. I take a deep breath, and go inside to sleep.

The next morning, I wake up at 7am and call Keyspan. They tell me that the supervisors don't come in until 8am, so I need to call back after 8. I explain what the problem is and then I'm told that there's already a service request that was entered in last night. (?!) I head to the blvd and go for a 25 minute run.

At 8am I give Keyspan another call to speak to a supervisor. I wanted to see if there was anything I could do to speed up the response time for the service call. I'm told that I can't speak to a supervisor and that the most they can do for me is give me a voicemail to leave a message and a supervisor will call me back. Grrrr. So I leave a message.

9:30pm rolls by and finally I receive a call back from a supervisor. I explain my problem and she tells me she will call the dispatch office and have someone come out right away. So I pack my bag for work and sit outside in my truck waiting for Keyspan to show up. By 10:30am I decide I can't wait any longer. I put the key to my basement in a place where the gas technician could get it when he calls me. I drive to the train station and catch the 11:15 train to Boston.

While on the train, the gas technician calls and tells me he's there, but he has no idea what he's doing there. So I explain the situation to him and tell him where the key is. He says he will see what he can do and call me back in a few minutes.

An already bad situation gets worse. Thirty minutes later he calls me back. He says that he cannot turn the gas back on because the gas piping in the basement has not been inspected. He confirmed that the meters were crossed and wrote up a long explanation of the situation to enter in the gas company's computers. He said the customer service department needs to handle switching the meters on the accounts so the correct meter is linked to the correct account.

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