Well I suppose persistence does pay.
I got a phone call yesterday afternoon around 4pm. The person identified himself as an employee of ECG and wanted to know where I lived. Fortunately he was already positioned on Blogordo Road and all he had to do was drive down as I was waiting for him outside my crib.
After we had done away with the pleasantries, I asked him if he had read the report I had initial logged with ECG Customer Service. He said "no". I was not surprised. I invited him into the house and went through with him what happened on the 10th. The faulty electric meter had been moved to another location. Due to the demolition going on in my property it had to be moved. Unfortunately it appears to be "dead". The electrician who moved the meter could not reconnect it. His attempt generated some sparks which resulted in his hand getting burnt.
Anyway the chap from ECG asked the electrician to obtain a specific board which a new meter will be attached to. Once the board is in place, a call will be made to the chap from ECG and he will bring over a new meter as a replacement.
This is beyond me now. I refuse to give up because I fail to see how a full government machinery can be so incompetent on the very basic function of providing service to customers.
Still on my burnt ECG meter and my several attempts to get them out to investigate; it appears ECG is doomed for failure.
I called ECG Customer Services again and was connected to Louise. After giving her my reference number, guess what, yes you probably guessed right. She blurted out “sorry sir, we are currently facing challenges with our system so please hold for 60 seconds” everything with ECG seems to be one massive “facing challenges”. When she finally got my details up on her screen, she informed me that she would send a…… I am trying to remember the phrase she used… sod it, I cannot remember; anyway, what she said implied was that she was informing the Fault Team that I had called.
At this stage, I tried to remain calm. After going through this same scenario over a period of five days, I was on the verge of exploding with anger. But I kept my cool. I bluntly told her that her action was useless because on every other occasion that I have rung her co-workers have done the same thing and I am still waiting for the Fault team to visit my property.
I then asked her if there was an update on my ticket regarding what time the Fault Team would be at my property..
She said no
I asked her if her message to the Fault Team would generate a response as to when I should expect them at my property.
She said no.
To make matters worse, she suggested that I ring the ECG Office at Makola and make a report. Yet again, I could not believe what I was being told.
Hang on I said to her, what is the purpose of me ringing you if you are asking me to make another phone call?
Oh well, I said to myself, I suppose it will not harm if I make this call. Let see what can go wrong here.
I wrote the two numbers she gave me [0302664900/0302664904] and dialled the first out of the two. It is no surprise why Ghanaian Government organisations are absolutely messed up. Can you imagine that when someone finally picked my call to Makola and after me explaining why I was calling, I got routed back to Customer Services. Fortunately the person at the end of the line knew what I needed and told me to ring again but this time dial extension 264 when prompted.
Extension 264 picked up my call, but had to take down my number because the person who can deal with my issue is on the phone and would call me back. Note that this was roughly an hour ago. I am still waiting for the call back.