Kudos to the folks over at Cumberland Valley Electric Cooperative, the Whitley County Road Department, local fire departments and many others, who responded to the aftermath of last Saturday night’s storms.
Power went out at my house in northern Whitley County about 2:08 a.m. Sunday. (I woke up when my CPAP machine for sleep apnea went off because of the power outage and looked over at my Fitbit in case anyone is wondering how I know what time it happened.)
The wind was pretty wicked and I could hear tree limbs hitting the house multiple times.
When my wonderful wife, Cecelia, and I went out to grab some breakfast, we were greeted by a big pine tree across the road. Fortunately, there is an alternate way out to the main road from where we live, but others weren’t so lucky.
We certainly weren’t alone with down trees and power outages.
According to a post on the Cumberland Valley Electric Cooperative Facebook page at 6:25 a.m. Sunday, there were about 2,933 members without power.
Fortunately, Cumberland Valley got our power back on shortly after 5 p.m., but one of my co-workers, who lives less than a mile from me didn’t get hers back on until about 8 p.m. Sunday.
Storms and storm damage is a really weird thing though. My dad, who lives about one mile away as the crow flies in southern Laurel County, didn’t have any power outage at all and I don’t think much, if any, storm damage.
At any rate, thanks to all, who worked during and after the storm, to get things back to normal for the rest of us.
Now for a few other random thoughts before I wrap up this column.
• Congratulations to Ann Hacker, Greg Daniels, Lisa Cleary and her husband, Kim Cleary, who have all been selected for the Corbin Hall of Honor, which is an honor bestowed by the Corbin Independent Board of Education. It is reserved for Corbin alumni, who have gone on to do great things, or transplants to Corbin, who have done great things for the community and the school district.
• This may go down as the DUMBEST thing that a customer service representative has ever said to someone.
Last week, my wife traveled over to West Virginia to visit her parents and set up her dad’s new cellphone. He had been paying $90 a month for a flip phone. My wife got him a smart phone and a better deal. He wanted to keep his number though.
My wife went to the AT&T store near her parent’s house with the account number, the PIN number and all of the information she should need to get the number ported over to the new phone and probably then some.
The people inside the AT&T store really tried to help her, but there was some fraud protection thing on the account. Then they had her call the fraud protection line. The lady, who answered, literally tried everything that she could to help my wife get the number ported over to the new phone. Finally, she told my wife that she had run out of things to try and transferred my wife to the international fraud protection line.
After being on the phone with my wife for about 20 minutes, the guy on the international fraud line finally told my wife, “I can’t help you and I can’t tell you why I can’t help you.”
Really!!!
I mean who says that to a customer?
Let’s just say that he was fortunate that he wasn’t talking to me…LOL.
This story does have a happy ending.
After an hour in the store, the local store clerk finally found a way to help my wife get her dad’s number ported over to the new phone.
