Power surge damage - can you help?

firequeen_2

Hi moneysavers!

Recently I had a series of power surges in the night. It seems the power tried to make the quickest way to earth - through my phone line, and caused damage to every appliance that was plugged into both the phone line and the power supply at once:- sky box, modem, cordless phone. It totally fried the microfilter - brilliant to see;o) - and killed the BT line. Needless to say this has required some expensive rectification, starting with the £100+ call out charge from BT to restore my phone line connection.

The electricity network operator confirmed that a broken jumper on the high voltage network was to blame, and immediately claimed to have no liability whatsoever. The law protects them against liability for unforeseen problems.

HOWEVER, my next door neighbour recalls experiencing this before, and the BT engineer claimed to have visited my property just over a year ago when the previous occupants experienced the exact same problem. A nearby small business also experienced the same problem around 18months ago.

I have written to the network operator demanding they accept liability on the basis that this problem must be forseeable if it has happened before, and am waiting for a reply. Can anyone offer any help or ammunition to help me with my cause? I am intending to take this as far as I can, if only to save my neighborhood from having to put up with these apparently 'well known' supply problems.

Cardew

This has been covered many times.

It is 'standard' procedure for them to try to get out of compensation, but some people have persisted and won it would seem.

I suggest you do a search on this forum for 'power surge' and you will find loads of threads.

SplanK

I remember when i was living at my parents - the entire street (around 120 houses) got a power spike up to around 415v - nice - it was cuased due to the earthing sheath around the cable becoming corroded and making contact with the mains cable - or something like that anyway

Anyway - the power distro company offered to replace anything that was faulty - just had to send them the bill!!!