Customer Stealing Electric

[switch10]

Called out last week to a site which has 110 commercial units. Customer reported black like stuff dripping from cables, upon investigation it was bitumen leaking from a cable. Now I traced this cable back to a Chinese wholesalers unit. Managed to gain access and found a 3 phase supply which was cable with bitumen leaking. On the end of this was 25mm tails direct into a 3 phase db. From this db was 2 large freezers . This is a Chinese wholesaler . No meter. Called western power who attended to check and confirmed supply not metered and customer had like this for 2 years.

Next day loss protection for western power arrive and disconnect supply.

I have since heard that the customer has simply been given a warning and no further action is to be taken. Lucky I think.

Anyone come across customers stealing electric ?

 

[steptoe]

I work is some sh tholes

prob maybe 30%+ of the void properties I see have evidence of theft,

some are very blatant and the means of abstraction are still present.

 

[switch10]

This is the first I have come across and whilst I know it happens I was shocked at a company that the. Owner is a millionaire

 

[Andy™]

plenty times, whilst working for council, not so often now. my customers are not usually the type to bypass the meter...

 

[Evans Electric]

Certain area not far from me , land of wheel less vehicles ,no insurance/tax/ driving licence...  NF voters , lot of schoolkids out on the streets during school hours , druggie cars cruising , doing your garden unheard of ...type area ..........  anyway many houses have sheet steel plates bolted in place to cover the cut-out & meter connections .

 

[SLIPSHOD & SLAPDASH]

They weren't prosecuted because they probably said 'it was like that when we got here' and it cant be proven & that may have been the case . The  average person would not have known anything was amiss, where as if cables are seen wedged in the bottom of a meter, covers   hanging off then its different. With different people involved in a business you could not notice or claim to have not noticed the bill not being paid.

I once noticed an E7 supply in a beauty palour type shop that had been altered to run directly off the head before any metering, the original DB was metered and this only had a few low power circuits in it . This was possible due to the mess of various  boards, tails & Henley  blocks , that you really had to tug hard at each cable to work out where it was going.  Although they denied knowing it was obvious they did as circuits had been removed from other boards and extended into the 'free' one. I meant to report it but forgot.

 

[Max6979]

Yes,  in my day as an EHO - during a routine inspection of a restaurant about 6 months ago -  I found what looked like a black box connected to the lekky meter - the black box had very small diameter cables coming out of it ( 2.5mm) and the digital meter was giving a code to indicate that it was not reading any current usage- I took photos and later the same day I sent e mail to Electricity Northwest. The engineer requested that I come with him to the restaurant that same day to show him the location of the disribution board which I did - when we arrived the black box had been removed and the owner of the business denied that there had ever been any box - he was given 10 minutes to bring the box back - he eventually brought a box but it was a cardbrd box which he had taped over to make it look like the device he had been using. The engineer disconnected the supply there and then with customers waiting to be served ( I was as popular as a fart in a space suit) and then the police were called - I was on site till 8pm helping the police with thier enquiries and I was lead to believe that the owner of the restaurant would be prosecuted but I have not heard anything since. The restaurant then got a petrol powered generator to supply the lekky for the premises and continues to trade .

 

[Pepparz]

I remember when that scouse bloke on Brookside wired his CU back up to get free leccy after been disconnected for not paying the bill