Hello everyone,
long story short, there was a power outage today and the power went out for 2 hours. This resulted my fridge to break. when the power went back on the fridge would not turn on. i was wondering if i can go complain to my electricity company to compensate my losses? its frustrating because we bought this fridge just last year.
Fridge Broke Because of Power Outage- Complain to The Electricity Company?
Hotpotcorn on 24/02/2016 - 20:38
Comments
Nope. Does it have a surge protector?
No.
They will just give you the cold shoulder
No, they won't… that's the problem.
There might be a breakdown in communication
lolol
Maybe your fridge caused the power outage.
Maybe the power company will ask you for compensation.
Sounds you should be contacting the fridge manufacturer if it's still under warranty.
Geez, what next, complain about the water supplier if you splutter on a glass of water? :(
Sydney Water should fence my bath. It is an attractive nuisance, and a toddler could drown.
Go with the warranty approach as everyone has suggested.
It would be very difficult to hold the electrical company at fault, after all how would you prove the power outage caused the fridge to stop working? If you can't prove that, then they can't be held at fault.
You can try to turn the temperature control to the "off" position, wait a few minutes, then raise it to SLIGHTLY above "off", and see if it runs after 30mins.
If it does, get back to me.
Generally when there's a power outage you're supposed to turn things like fridges etc off while it's out, to avoid a spike when it comes back on again.
It's more likely a voltage dip than a spike. Motors like those used in fridges do not like starting (and running) on low voltage.
Anyway, most of the power outages where I live seem to occur when I'm not home. How can I turn things off if I'm not there?
We've had laser printers die (power supply failure) due to brownouts. I was actually in the same room when one happened - jumped up to turn it off but it was too late. All it takes is a second for the printer to attempt to start, and permanently die.
We had a technician confirm that it was a low-voltage-related power failure, and the fact that a brownout occurred was well known (and also confirmed by logs from the UPS on the computer). Ausgrid ended up paying for the replacement and the technician.
This is also completely different from a simple outage (had those) and a surge (brownout protection is much harder to get, short of a UPS, and the peak power draw of a laser printer is incompatible with standard UPSes). Also, as far as I can tell, brownouts are generally an intentional decision on the supplier's part - they could choose to cut off power entirely.
Would u not have to prove that the electricity company caused the power outage? (out of negligence, as opposed to a 39 degree day)
You can't expect as a consummer there will never be any outages due to high heat, or else poweer companies just invest infinitely into infrastructure and charge us insanely for infrastructure we don't use.
Was it a power outage or power surge/spike ?
I've never had a fridge fail because of a power outage… Had a power surge a few years ago which caused my fridge, microwave and ducted heating to fail. This was all compensated by the power company (as in they paid for a new fridge and repairs to the ducted heating).
As others have already said call the company and get someone out to assess it. It'll have a manufacturer warranty and you are also covered by the ACL.
If the technician comes out and says that a power outage caused the fault then you can claim through your power company.
Anyone else see strong similarities in Threads and Replies to Whirlpool? :/
Pretty sure most energy suppliers have a cap on claims as it was been abused.
I have claimed a computer and 2 alarm systems on power surges. All that was needed was a stat dec and a fault diagnosis from a qualified person.
One other thing that you must have also is:- the date and TIME that the fault happened.
Should be under warranty from the shop you bought it from, no?