Refund from Northern Power for electrician call?

Burnsie1983

So last night whilst I was in the shower the power went in my house.

I spent a good while cycling all my switches on my fuse board to try and workout what happened. 

As nothing had tripped and being slightly concerned about why the power was there for out and yet nothing was obviously tripping, after about an hour (and my alarm going off) I called an emergency electrician

When they arrived they spent a few seconds looking at my fuse box and then measured and deduced that there was no power coming into that fuse box... A quick look at my metre box outside and they said that there was a problem with the power supply coming to the house and that I needed to ring northern power.

Northern Power arrived a couple of hours later, and just as quickly suggested that there was no power going to the metre box (rather than my electrician who thought that there was an issue with the metre box itself).

The issue is there for some form of switch or cable in which is part of the national Grid/power supply off my property... Specifically they are going to have to dig through the pavement outside my house...

My question is, how's this fault is not on my property? No. Is anything to do with my houses electrics, should Northern Power reimburse me for the cost of calling an electrician?

Now on the one hand, was my choice to call said electrician, and I was not aware that I could have called Northern Power directly after the power outage... On the other hand, the fault of my property caused me to be concerned about the safety of my house, which is why I called set electrician.

What do people think?

lohr500

I suspect you won't be able to get Northern Power to reimburse you anything for calling out the electrician.

ArbitraryRandom

Just curious - how did you get the number for an emergency electrician? 

If I google power cut on my phone, the top five results tell me to call 105 - then at least 3 more tell me to call my DNO (and clicking, give a link to find out who that is). 

For what it's worth, no - I think you choose to call an electrician and can't see how the energy co could be held responsible for you not knowing. If you still don't have power though, you can claim compensation (and worth checking with your home insurance for the contents of your freezer etc)

p00hsticks

Just my opinion, but I don't think that you'd be entitled to anything back from Northern Powergrid. As you've since realised, you could have got in touch with them directly to report the outage and they could have looked into it for you for free - I've found them very responsive the couple of times I've needed to report an outage. A few weeks ago we had an engineer come out at 1am on a Monday morning after reporting a power cut that we thought affected a few houses, and the road had been dug up and the power restored by the time we woke up on the Monday morning.  

For future reference, if you have a smart phone it's worth putting their app on it so that in the event of any future power failures (when you won't have wifi access) you can check to see if it is a known issue and if not report it. Alternatively you can apparently report a power cut 24 hours a day by calling 105

Burnsie1983

Thanks all.

I agree... Just wanted to make sure before I get the old chequebook out!

Learning experience for me

I went for an emergency plumber because I didn't even know that you could call the power grid directly!

MeteredOut

Burnsie1983 said:

Thanks all.

I agree... Just wanted to make sure before I get the old chequebook out!

Learning experience for me

I went for an emergency plumber because I didn't even know that you could call the power grid directly!

:O

typo, i hope

Burnsie1983

MeteredOut said:

Burnsie1983 said:

Thanks all.

I agree... Just wanted to make sure before I get the old chequebook out!

Learning experience for me

I went for an emergency plumber because I didn't even know that you could call the power grid directly!

:O

typo, i hope

Lolz.... No wonder he wasn't any good 😊

BobT36

p00hsticks said:

For future reference, if you have a smart phone it's worth putting their app on it so that in the event of any future power failures (when you won't have wifi access) you can check to see if it is a known issue and if not report it. Alternatively you can apparently report a power cut 24 hours a day by calling 105

I don't see an app for Northern Powergrid? Only the web page. 

p00hsticks

BobT36 said:

p00hsticks said:

For future reference, if you have a smart phone it's worth putting their app on it so that in the event of any future power failures (when you won't have wifi access) you can check to see if it is a known issue and if not report it. Alternatively you can apparently report a power cut 24 hours a day by calling 105

I don't see an app for Northern Powergrid? Only the web page. 

Yes, apologies - I thought it was an app I had on my phone, but on re-checking it is just a link to the 'power cuts' page of their website that I've saved onto my phone. 

AS I've said, worth doing so that you have a way of reporting an outage if you don't have wifi available. 
Power cuts map | Northern Powergrid

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

I'm not sure many people here will know enough about the specifics of seeking damages to answer the question with anything more than an opinion  

Myself included in this instance but I think there usually has to be negligence which might be difficult to prove, however if you don't ask you don't get. 

Qyburn

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

I'm not sure many people here will know enough about the specifics of seeking damages to answer the question with anything more than an opinion  

Myself included in this instance but I think there usually has to be negligence which might be difficult to prove, however if you don't ask you don't get. 

My understanding is there has to be a "duty of care", and then negligence in that duty, resulting in loss or damage. I'm sure you wouldn't get anywhere suing the DNO just because there was a power cut. So what would the claim be, that they didn't sufficiently publicise how to report a power cut?

I don't know about you but I feel the information is widely publicised, just as an example it's on the first page of each of our bills.