EDF has power 'blips' most days, often several times. Puts everything off for a few seconds; the Livebox particularly takes a while to catch up but EDF are doing nothing about it. Now one of those power downs followed by a surge has killed our washing machine during a wash, my printer whilst printing stuff out and several light bulbs. If it happened during the night and put down my respirator it could cause me serious harm. If it caused a hypoxic seizure that could lead to a heart attack and we all know what that could do.
We haven't been for a look for anything else yet. It is more than enough anyway.
Yes Jane, we have the 'para foudre'; made sure when we had all of our wiring replaced. The darned respirator is not a 'life-support' machine, it is one of those things that is qualified as 'assisting'. Anyway, that'll be sorted soon. Spent yesterday afternoon with my sleep specialist in Bordeaux, now have 24 hours in hospital at the end of the month to look at my sleep, respiratory and heart functions at the same time. If it comes out, as he postulates, that I have an overall condition that was caused by cardiological things then I get letters to support such things as UPS. With a bit of luck I might be able to cheat the system and have one that will support this computer plus a printer. However, as far as getting as much as an apology for the printer, washing machine, light bulbs or anything else out of EDF, it is much the same as your example of the supermarket queue!
Brian, we too are having these power 'blips'. It is extremely annoying as we can be woken up in the middle of the night by the answering machine coming back on stream and telling us "merci de patienter".
I am pretty sure that in the UK you can tell the relevant supplier that you have a life-support machine in your home and they make every effort to avoid power outages on your line.
How that would work here in France I do not know, as if you dropped down dead in the supermarket queue for the cashier, they would eventually sweep you away, as you have become the ultimate nuisance!
Jim says check to see if you can have a para foudre next to the earth leakage trips. It might take care of some of the spikes.
Been there and done that with a couple of things, including an 'express delivery' that took over two weeks because they tried to deliver to Calès in Lot instead of this one in Dordogne, then returned to the dealer because they had given the wrong delivery details. Given the importance of post codes here nobody could work out how they figured that out!
If my pals at RSI accept this as necessary and give me a grant, my regular computer store will buy in for me. Within 24 hours.
Brian. Whatever you do don't get it delivered by UPS. They can't even find their own arse with both hands. I've given them GPS co-ordinates for our house but they still get lost!!