Coldness until Monday.
[The rest of my Northwest Natural problem can be found with my first problem last night, the annoying follow-up this morning, and some progress made later.]
Well, I believe my Northwest Natural phone journey has drawn to a close. I was able to get a call back from a Supervisor, who was quite nice, and she sent me off to a private company that could, supposedly, turn things back on. Well, after calling and finding out that anyone other than Northwest Natural could not turn things back on, the supervisor I spoke with left me a message apologizing for the confusion, which I appreciated. I immediately called back and we spoke for a while more. I inquired about the possibility of doing it later tonight, but Monday was the earliest it could get done. Considering the time I’ve taken (my morning), and the fact that I got things moved up a little, I’ve decided to push no longer.
The trouble is, of course, the house is going to be cold, cold, cold for the next three days. I’m going to double-check with Kara and a few other people to see if we can do anything else, but I feel semi-successful.
Of course, I shouldn’t have to feel successful when dealing with any company, I should just be happy with their service. But, when I had to go through the escapades of crawling up the customer service tree, make several different calls, talk to six different people (even if many of them were quite nice), and finally get some changes and an apology, Northwest Natural doesn’t look so hot.
In our 24/7, always-on society, it surprises me that a company providing such a base service doesn’t have 24-hour services. I expected, at least, a 24-hour phone system that handled things other than just emergencies. I was hopeful for same-day service. And I dreamed of an automated system of stopping and starting. None of those things happened. Save for the first person I talked to this morning, Northwest Natural should praise their customer service staff for having to manage customers with such a poor system in place. With few ways to actually help their customers at such a crucial time, I pity the customer service department. Of course, there is always the chance that I was lied to, and someone could have come out today (I’m sure I could push hard enough, but I have limits.), but if their procedures say tell them to put people off until the person starts screaming, that procedure has to be re-written.
All in all, I’m still disappointed in the entire experience. I’ve turned off everything I can to stop from blowing in cold air, turned on all the electronics in the house to warm things up, and have been able to get the hallway to about 64° F, but I doubt that will last through the day. I keep going back to the suggestion of a postcard, and am still astounded we heard nothing from a company that, for all they knew, was giving away gas for free. Then, when called on it, would insult me, an almost for-sure customer.
And I would venture a guess that they’re so sloppy because of little other options for natural gas in the Northwest (i.e., monopoly). I attempted to look around for natural gas in our area, but to no avail. If we wanted to switch to electric, we’d have to buy new equipment. In the Wal-mart sense of the word, we’re stuck: we don’t really have another option. If you happen to know of any, let me know in the comments!
And, if you happen to work at (or run) Northwest Natural, feel free to give me a call at 360\904\8516. I’d be glad to do discuss any of the ideas I’ve presented in these posts as well as others I haven’t (for free, of course, but I’d also love some free natural gas, as no one told me how much this was going to cost per month!).