IGNORE THE ESKOM SITE, it is wrong (by their own admission)!
by Fred Roed on 03/03/08 at 3:10 pm
6 comments
You’ve got to love living in Africa.
This just came in from Rowan, a colleague of mine at World Wide Creative. He’s been subscribing to LoadAlert, the Eskom load shedding notification service.
Dear LoadAlert subscriber,
You may have noticed that you have not been receiving LoadAlert emails for the past few days.
After the recent release of Eskom’s new load shedding schedule we started updating our systems only to find that the information contained in Eskom’s PDF files and the information in Eskom’s area search facility do not match.
We contacted Eskom help desk and they informed us that ALL the information on the website is wrong. That is, both the PDF files and area search facility contain the incorrect information. So how are we supposed to know when load shedding is scheduled for our area? We don’t know!!! Do you?!?!
We will be in contact with Eskom over the next few days (as if we don’t have better things to do) to find out when they will update their website. In the meantime, IGNORE THE ESKOM SITE, it is wrong (by their own admission)!
Beautiful.
Fred Roed is the marketing guy in the Ideate crew. Fred is the CEO of web marketing company World Wide Creative and the co-founder of online learning portal Heavy Chef. Fred loves writing about people out there doing marketing right. Follow Fred on Twitter here. View more articles by Fred Roed.
Wogan May
Mar 3rd, 2008
Hahaha. Man, gotta love government controlled sites.
I actually had this discussion with a friend a while back. About just how accurate does he think the Eskom website is?
I’m still wondering about one thing, though – that little load meter. It’s taken directly from PowerAlert, but where do they get the data from? All the site says is that they’re in contact with some or other communication center.
It would be nice if Eskom (or anyone) could show us the exact path the information takes between the meters at the power plants, and PowerAlert/Eskom.
But if they can’t even keep their own tables up to date, I wonder how they’ll succeed at that…
Thanks for the heads up, lol.
~ Wogan
Fred
Mar 3rd, 2008
Hi ya Wogan, I was thinking that Eskom should put up a blog – just to keep their customer service face on, y’know?? Can you imagine how much feedback they would get? It’d be better than the iBurst blog that got canned after 2 posts and 2000 comments about bad service.
Linsey
Apr 4th, 2008
I would like to inform you that I too am a Load alert subscriber. They are not run by Eskom but are infact a small group of people that got together to assist people in making sense of the load shedding schedule within the Eskom site. If the person who posted this blog was really paying attention to their first email then they would have read that they are not working for Eskom at all but get their information from Eskom to send out emails informing people when the load shedding will be taking place in their selected area. And as it is stated at the end of thier blog: “We will be in contact with Eskom over the next few days (as if we don’t have better things to do) to find out when they will update their website. In the meantime, IGNORE THE ESKOM SITE, it is wrong (by their own admission)!” that clearly points out that these people are not working for Eskom – do yourself a favour and try to read what is infront of you instead of just jumping to conclusions. Try be appreciative of people who are out there trying to help the situation we are in!
In Load Alert’s most recent email they say: “We have finally updated the latest Eskom and City Power load shedding schedules. Sorry its taken so long, but please understand that we do have our regular jobs to take care of.”
They are getting their information from Eskom directly – so do you really think their emails will be 100% correct (IT IS ESKOM)
They also say: “This service is free of charge, so don’t bother sending emails for support or complaints. “Thank you” emails are welcome to: info@loadalert.co.za.”
Blogger please read your emails before posting something onto an internet site!
I think load alert is doing a great job – at least they are trying – unlike Eskom…
Fred
Apr 4th, 2008
Sheeeesh Linsey, this is quite a comment. Thanks for your feedback, seriously – it’s great you have so much conviction.
Only thing though: you’ve completely missed the point of this post. We’re not taking the piss out of LoadAlert (in fact we’re big fans) but we’re actually having a laugh at Eskom’s expense.
Darryn
Apr 30th, 2008
Hey there guys,
We recently launched MyEnergy, a free little app that allows you to monitor the schedules of different locations, and
* receive notifications when outages are expected,
* shutdown/hibernate your pc,
* write to the Windows event log,
* run scripts (backup/sms/email etc)
before the power goes.
We’ve had loads of great responses and feedback, and already have 5000 downloads and climbing! The app is constantly evolving and we are always open to new ideas and features.
You can check it out here http://www.myenergy.co.za – let us know what you think!
Regards
Darryn
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