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.

 

[Slowhand]

I got called out to get the storage heaters working in the offices of a company that organised jobs abroad for gap year students. Everyone in the offices was fresh out of uni and had a degree. I went in and explained who l was and was made to feel like I was some kind of sub human. That got my back up right away, I really don’t like being talked down to treated like a servant.
The heating hadn’t been working for days but I couldn’t find anything wrong.
I asked one of the girls to go through her “ shut down procedure “ that the last one out of the office did every night. She shut down her computer, turned it off at the socket and then turned the DP switch for the storage heater off. So I asked her if everyone did the same and she said yes.
I got them all ( about 30 of them ) together and asked the mouthiest bloke to demonstrate the procedure and asked everyone to watch to make sure they all did the same thing. As he went to turn off the DP to the storage heater I shouted “ BANG!!” He didn’t like that and neither did the rest of them.
I told them they might have degrees but even the stupidest person I had ever met knew storage heaters needed to be left turned on at night and that for people of their supposed education I would have expected a lot better.
The owner of the company, another clever mouthy b*****d soon shut up when the owner of the building called him and told him it was his fault the heating didn’t work and he had to pay me for the day and he had to pay me now.
I got paid and left them trying to work out why the heaters wouldn’t get hot till tomorrow when they’re switched on now.
Total waste of education!

 

[gnuuser]

In the USA, that's one helluva drive!!!

yes it was
they didnt notice the e-stop because the lamp burned out in the button
my only question for them is why didnt they check all the e-stops in the first place?
im sure they did start doing it after they got my invoice (over $3000.00 plus expenses)

 

[Silly Sausage]

Clear evidence that you can put a price on stupidity!

 

[PEG]

Did a bio-filter re-install for a pal,after NHBC registered builders of his new-build royally cocked up and walked....anywho...replaced damaged cabling,junction boxes etc,re-set and tested. Give little speech about what can and cannot,go through,all groovy. Few weeks later,phone call "It smells,it's noisy,and i can't have a bill off you,everytime i curl one out!" ...get down there,strip out pumps,and find blockage consisting of 1 small pair of childs "superman" underpants,and 500 cotton-buds...no problems money wise (best paying customer i have) but,found out too late,that lying down fiddling with pumps,had got comfy on top of a red ants nest...probably had a nip per quid...:conehead:

 

[Darkwood]

after cotton buds im totally lost PEG :uhoh2:

 

[Besoeker]

OK. A test rig for winches.
They were run back to back for endurance tests.
One winches in and the other winches out - renders was the term used.

When all the rope is used up on one drum the process is reversed. The one that was winching in becomes the one rendering. And this is repeated for the duration for the duration of the required test.
Steel wire rope. Neat way to test. You can't push rope. Just pull it.

The system had four quadrant (regenerative) DC drives. Ours.

I got called on a Saturday morning.
"It's making a thumping noise."
I got to site, fortunately not too far away in this case.
Yep. Sure enough. There was a thumping noise.
Could be an intermittent or missing pulse one one of the drives I thought.
Tested the drives. Perfect current balance. No fault found. But still there was that thumping.

I had a little look around at the mechanical set up. The transmission from the DC motor to the winch was by an internally toothed belt. A Morse belt.

Turned out that one was slipping a cog from time to time. It simply hadn't be correctly tensioned. Not an electrical problem after all.
The delicious irony is that the guy who called me out was the mechanical designer of the system.

 

[GMES]

Ok I have had all the pulling out of estops etc in the factories, but my 2 favourite stupid call outs were
!= nothing working in the house only to find out they hadn't topped their card up so it had run out, classic and it is now my 1st question
before I set off.
2= Music teacher rings me saying he has a major problem with his sockets and he has identified the problem, brilliant I thought this will save a bit of investigating, when I arrive he sticks is socket tester in the closest socket to show me 2 green lights and a beeping sound.
He was quite happy until I pointed out that the tester was actually telling him everything was ok.
Both idiots got charged accordingly for wasting my time.

 

[Simon-0116]

cooker instalation

Not exactly a call out but went to swap a cooker. Took old one out got new one out of box and it was GAS. That was for a friend, made be double check every thing before i stsrt any job now

 

[Engineer54]

yes it was
they didnt notice the e-stop because the lamp burned out in the button
my only question for them is why didnt they check all the e-stops in the first place?
im sure they did start doing it after they got my invoice (over $3000.00 plus expenses)

I've often been told that tradesmen services are bloody expensive in the US, but that kind of fee puts expensive into a whole new category of it's own!! lol!!

 

[trev]

nothing working in the house only to find out they hadn't topped their card up so it had run out

I've had that one a few times from different flats all owned by the same couple. They loved the idea of paying my call out fee, so much so they learned to check it themselves when they get the call from their overseas student tenants.
Still, scored a few call outs for 3/10s of bugger all

 

[Guest111]

Got a call about 1.30 am and could barely hear over the sound of sirens,bloke says my alarm won't turn off,I asked the address and he says Lord street,so I said thats Southport surely theres someone nearer.He says no Lord street st helens near the police station.Anyway there s no Lord street but there is a Ward street,Turned up to find half the street out and this alarm blaring full belt.The guy was so drunk he'd put the wrong code in,then because it wouldn't stop had yanked all the wires out of the panel and it was running on the sirens own battery.

 

[trev]

Genius

 

[gnuuser]

I've often been told that tradesmen services are bloody expensive in the US, but that kind of fee puts expensive into a whole new category of it's own!! lol!!

with myself and an apprentice
driving a 1 ton panel truck (equipped with a 10 kw generator) fully loaded with equipment and supplies about 1250 to 1300 miles starting out at 2am adds a whole new level to invoicing

 

[telectrix]

OK. A test rig for winches.
They were run back to back for endurance tests.
One winches in and the other winches out - renders was the term used.

When all the rope is used up on one drum the process is reversed. The one that was winching in becomes the one rendering. And this is repeated for the duration for the duration of the required test.
Steel wire rope. Neat way to test. You can't push rope. Just pull it.

The system had four quadrant (regenerative) DC drives. Ours.

I got called on a Saturday morning.
"It's making a thumping noise."
I got to site, fortunately not too far away in this case.
Yep. Sure enough. There was a thumping noise.
Could be an intermittent or missing pulse one one of the drives I thought.
Tested the drives. Perfect current balance. No fault found. But still there was that thumping.

I had a little look around at the mechanical set up. The transmission from the DC motor to the winch was by an internally toothed belt. A Morse belt.

Turned out that one was slipping a cog from time to time. It simply hadn't be correctly tensioned. Not an electrical problem after all.
The delicious irony is that the guy who called me out was the mechanical designer of the system.

misreads that as test rig for wenches. was expecting a picture of your king size bed.

 

[Besoeker]

misreads that as test rig for wenches. was expecting a picture of your king size bed.

Wash that brain out!!!