It beats cockfighting

My father, bless him, was old school of his generation and this is how he referred to anything that was ridiculous, stupid or the the product of some kind of otherwise inexplicable madness. And never was it more true than today.

Now that my house had its permanent electrical connection I wanted Enedis to disconnect the temporary connection that I’ve had for the last 2 years that was used for the caravan and for the house construction. I’d fired off an email last week to the contact in Enedis who’d previously helped me out but had received no acknowledgement or answer so I contacted Enedis by phone on Saturday.

The young lady who I spoke to was both lazy and bored and said she couldn’t do it even though Enedis claim to offer a full service on Saturdays and suggested that I called back on Monday (today) when someone would be able to help me. However, I thought that rather than try to go through that painful process all over again I’d send a secure message to Enedis through their web site.

I was heartened when I received a quick automatic response saying that my request would be promptly dealt with and waited to see what would happen. I didn’t have long to wait this morning when my house’s new connection was abruptly cut off. Just in case this was a local power cut I went to check my temporary connection and found that it was still live so it was obvious what had happened. Some fool in Enedis had pulled the plug on the wrong connection.

I quickly sent another less courteous message to Enedis through their web site using my mobile phone and shortly after that the house connection came back on again. But that was not the end of the matter – far from it.

Almost as soon as I turned my kettle on to make a cup of tea the power cut yet again. When I went to investigate I found a message on the new Linky smart meter saying that power was available and to press an illuminated button. So I did and the power cut again almost instantly.

When I checked the Linky more closely I found another message which, translated, said that the contract power had been exceeded. I thought this was weird because everything had been fine last night with much more power being used so I was already beginning to smell a rat.

When the supply contract for the house had originally been set up it had been for a power of 9 kVA. However, due to an EDF cock-up at the time a second had to be set up and this time the adviser said that all I needed was 6 kVA. I thought this was a bit low and thought that it might be the source of the problem, but if so, why was everything OK last night?

So I phoned EDF this morning to try to get the problem resolved and as usual, half-way through my explanation I was cut off. Funny how this ALWAYS happens, isn’t it. So I phoned back and after a lengthy delay got through to a second agent who said he’d help me sort things out.

And we soon found the problem. When EDF had first set up the new permanent account for the house instead of using the correct PDL (meter reference number) that I’d given them, they’d made a cock-up and used one for yet another temporary connection, which would not function as it did not agree with the reference baked into the Linky meter’s software.

Then this morning when Enedis had incorrectly cut my house off, the idiot who reconnected it shortly after I’d sent my second message used this incorrect PDL. I said above that it would not function, but it does, but only at a minimally low power level.

Having got to the bottom of this, after hanging on my phone for about half an hour the EDF adviser returned to say that he was having difficulty contacting Enedis at that moment (no surprise there then). He said that it had all been communicated to them, that yet another (my third) new contract had been created for my house connection, this time again at 9 kVA, and that everything would be back to normal within a few hours.

This evening I can’t even boil a kettle because nothing had been done all day. Oh wait a minute, that’s not quite true. I thought earlier that in that case I’d run a cable down from the temporary connection and use that to boil the kettle. Know what? It’s been disconnected. The utter incompetence of Enedis knows no bounds.