Callouts you should never have been called to!

[Darkwood]

Just been called out to a customer saying the hot water is luke warm at best and been like that a week now, so after asking a few questions over phone to save a trip I decided I needed to go out and check it out...

It was a simple set-up on inspection supply to a mechanical 2hr boost timer only then to the water tank element, it all tested ok nothing out of the ordinary but confirmed the water was luke warm after it had been on for 90mins, now I dont know why but although it could have been a few things like faulty stat etc --something niggled me, I asked if any females are on sight to they confusingly said no!, do you have womens toilets - 'Yes' was the reply so off I wondered and as soon as i opened the door I saw the hot water tap running half flow lol....

Embarrased was the guy to say the least and sorry he wasted my time, I said don't be as Im getting paid and its not me that has to explain to the boss why turning the hot tap off in the womens toilets cost £60 ..... of course Ill edit the invoice to protect his arse but still funny thinking about it.

 

[Andystraughan]

Get a call out from a landlord saying the tenant has just moved out and the fridge wasn't working and the Dinning room light wasn't working. Popped over next day light had no bulbs in and fridge not plugged in haha

 

[PEG]

after cotton buds im totally lost PEG :uhoh2:

...Come on,i have relatives at Elland,and they know what money,pumps and ants are...:sorcerer:

 

[Lucien Nunes]

Very small stage lighting installation, 18 channels IIRC with a 15A patch. 'Can you come and have a look, nothing seems to work.' I asked some simple questions that seemed to point to a dimmer or desk power supply fault. All the leds are on in the right places but no output from any channels.

When I got there, every single one of the 10A HRC channel fuses had blown. 'This is odd,' I said. 'Can you explain what happened in what order?'
'Well, we had a couple of lamps fail and the dimmer channels seemed to fail with them. (note - T-class lamps often blow the fuse when they fail) 'But then we had a repatch and I forgot which channels had died. So I tested them with this lamp.' He indicated a 500W halogen hung nearby. 'By that time the dimmers seemed to have gone down totally though, I couldn't get one channel to work.'

His 'test' lamp had an L-N short and he had systematically tried it in every channel in turn. You would think that after a few he would have got suspicious and tried a different lamp!

 

[Harni]

Last year i had a callout with a description of fire alarm not working at all. Thought, thats odd so tried to phone the site to have a chat....no answer. Trekked all the way down there to find the manager panicking because the fire alarm didn't work


Didn't mention to me that another company were replacing the system with a nice shiny addressable system and had installed the new one and were starting to rip out the old hence powering it down!

Also had another early this year with a description of emergency lights on. Phoned the site and asked if they had anything else working. Yeah it all works fine. So i head down there, 8 at night in winter to be met with a street in pitch black. No street lights, every other house in darkness. Walk in, told them they had a power cut to be met with a really ****ty reply of "it can't be, my dinner is cooking!"....it was a gas cooker.

 

[trev]

Me Zimbabwean joiner mate rang me earlier because he'd lost power on one side of his CU. So went along and his RCD is goosed.
That rarely bloody happens when it's chargeable!

 

[7029 dave]

Just got back from an shout, no heating/ho****er, possible phase out (3 phase supply), test at meter 417v on the screws, looked at the db feeding the off peak, live connected to teli switch, terminal 5 as it should be, told customer it won't energise until it kicks in much later. 3hrs thank you.

 

[Jamzie]

Company I was working for had installed new electrical infrastructure at a residential park. We'd had a few issues with street lighting and a few minor niggles and the owner was a miserable sod, threatening not to pay. First major downpour and a resident had lost all power. I drove from Lincolnshire to Devon to investigate, expecting a damaged underground cable. Resident had owned home for 10 years and didn't know an RCD existed in their cupboard until I had to reset it. Took 10 hours there and back, less than 5 minutes to fix!

 

[Lucien Nunes]

no heating/ho****er

This made me laugh! Bleeping computers!

 

[D Skelton]

Late night call out to a nightclub last week. Gave them the price and the terms, as always, over the phone, to which they agreed. I rock up 30 mins later to find another electrician fault finding. Manager comes over and says "sorry, we had to make a few calls as we needed to guarantee someone would turn up". "No worries" I said, "That'll be £100 please. Cash or card?".

 

[HandySparks]

Did he quibble?

 

[D Skelton]

Did he quibble?

He wasn't happy, but he paid, funnily enough twice what the other guy was doing the work for

 

[ipf]

He wasn't happy, but he paid, funnily enough twice what the other guy was doing the work for

What happened when the other four turned up, I wonder ?

 

[Thefailsafe2012]

Hey dudes! I haven't posted here in a while, thought I'd chime in with one

Got a call off a builder we frequently work with, frantically explaining one of his elderly customers in the middle of the west end had a chandelier that wasn't lighting up full whack, and was just dim. So of course I ask is it on a dimmer? He said no I have checked myself and it's a standard rocker and not a dimmer in sight. After asking if he was absolutely certain there was in dimmer I set off, straight into the congestion charge zone, struggle like heck to get a parking space, battle my way past the stern unhelpful porter of her building, up 3 flights of stairs to be greeted by the customers house keepers. The two of them, explain that they couldn't work out what has happened to the lights and how worried they and the lady of the house were that something was majorly wrong. Anyway I walk in one door of the dining room, it's a big flat and there's another door on the other side of the room to the kitchen, seeing the switch and the lights glowing dimly, I walked to the second door, swung it shut and lo and behold, there it was, a dimmer.

It must have rotated itself as nobody was prepared to own up to adjusting it. I was in and out in less than a minute (ooh er).

 

[Hawk]

I used to work in a factory doing maintenance. Got called to a production area 1st thing in the morning because the lights weren't working. Major drama, production couldn't work as there were no lights! Walked over to the switch turned I'd on and hey presto! Lol

 

[singingfraggle]

call out cooker oven not working wife back off holiday tomorrow and she wont like living out of take away boxes 30 seconds later clock set on cooker oven works again a very embarrassed alpha male paying me not to sure if it was hush money though