How Many People Does it Take To Fix A Street Light?

Lights Lane Cove

Recently, In the Cove was contacted by a roving reporter, who lives in Murray Street with a request for assistance. The Roving Reporter was concerned that some Murray Street Lights had not been working for over four weeks.  Murray Street is a difficult street to navigate with many cars parked on the street.  You may recall that last year there was quite a bad accident with one car damaging several cars parked on the narrow street.

 

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The roving reporter had reported the issue to Ausgrid.  When it was not fixed the roving reporter lodged a complaint in writing and then followed it up with phone calls.  Still nothing was fixed.

The roving reporter advised us of the following:

I reside in Murray Street. I have reported to Ausgrid the street light GL06871 on the 2nd of February. The other Street lights on Murray Street GL06873 (near Ralston Street) & GL06872 in the middle of Murray Street were also reported on the 19th February. A follow up revealed that the street light GL06872 that had been reported had not been recorded as such by Ausgrid. On Thursday 25th February, this was reported again.
A search on the Ausgrid website will reveal another street light GL06878 in Ralston Street.

In the Cove decided to take up the issue with Ausgrid on their Facebook page.  This was the reply we received:

 

We have crews continuing work to repair a faulty underground circuit which supplies the streetlights in Murray Street. They have identified problems at the street lighting control point, and these were repaired last week. They are also continuing investigations today and into next week to pinpoint the location of the cable fault to get power back to all these lights. While not all the faulty lights may be appearing on the map, all your reports have been received and assigned to your initial report of Feb 2 (Ref No. 5100056071).

In the meantime the Murray Street roving reporter finally contacted the Lane Cove Ausgrid Supervisor  and was told that the fault would be fixed within the next week. The Ausgrid Supervisor advised that only an hour ago he had received a please explain from Head Office as they had seen ITC’s Facebook post.

The Murray Street Lights were fixed within the time frame advised.  If just goes to show if you want something fixed sometimes you have to resort to social media.  It would not have mattered that it was ITC or an individual raising the query via social media.  The fact of the matter is that companies are responding to social media complaints promptly.  A recent UK study found that organizations across the United Kingdom are increasing their customer service reach through social media.  Recent data shows that in 2016, brand managers answered customer inquiries faster on Facebook (44 percent) and Twitter (48 percent) than by using email (38 percent). Although email plays an important role in many organizations’ marketing initiatives, lagging response times have led customer service reps to use Facebook and Twitter more frequently.

Ausgrid is responsible for street lights in the Lane Cove Council area (the exception to this is lights located on council land such as the Rosenthal Ave Car Park).  To report a street light is not working just click on this link. The site will even show you if a light has already been reported as not working.

So don’t remain in the dark, if you see a streetlight is not working make sure you report it to Ausgrid as soon as possible.

You may also want to read our blog on five community apps which help you to report different local issues to the respective local council or public authority.

 

community apps

 

Do you have a question about Lane Cove you are dying to have answered? Please send us an email at [email protected]

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