COLUMN: "A Tale of Two Monopolies"

It was the best of times;it was the worst of times. Well... that's half right anyway. Moving into a new apartment is not a great deal of fun. In fact, it is an inconveinence of the first degree; an experience that consumes a great deal of time while giving very little satisfaction. The more uncouth among us might even say that it is a downright pain in the ass. In any case, it is an experience I urge all of you to avoid as much as possible. Packing all of one's belongings in cardboard boxes, removing osters from walls, dismantiling the leaborate and painstakeingly constructed extension cord system you so proudly completed just a year ago. These are all activities which bring tears to your eyes, not because of sadness for the past you are leaving behind, but because of the koweledge that within the next two days you are going to have to unpack all that you have just put away. This includes the now tangled knot of extension cords which, in accordence with the First Rule of Electrical Socket Placement in New Apartments, will be one short of the number that you need in your new place, causing you to rush out to Marty's and spend half a day waiting in line while you are strip-searched to make sure you aren't making off with any of that oh so valuable Marty's merchendise. But, I digress. A few weeks before moving into my new place I called Heckyll and Jeckyll and requested electrical service beginning June 1 and also to have my phone line transferred June 1 while exercising my option to keep it at my old location for thirty days. I didn't think these were particularly difficult requests and apparently neither did the Customer Service people on the phone who assured me that "Everything will be taken care of." and of course asked "Are you satisfied with the result of your call sir?" Unfortunately I was to hear those words all too many times in the next few days. What I had forgotten was that Heckyll and Jeckyll had received Doctorate degrees from Buracracy University. In fact I had once heard a rumor that Heckyll taught a course called Metropolitan Public Utilities - Patronage and Ineffciency or How to Drive People to the Suburbs. I had known other graduates from this prestigious school including most notably Voter Registration at City Hall and of course my own dear employer, the University of Pennsylvania, but none of them had advanced beyond the Master's program. As you might have guessed, when I returned home from work June 1, I had no power and no phone. As it turns out the phone company came by around 7 PM and hooked up the phone, but in the meantime I used a pay phone, (one of the ones in front of Billybobs that are made by that alleged telephone company in Havertown which can't even afford a normal taped operator's voice but has to use one that sounds like the ship's computer on the old Star Trek, and eerily enough makes phones that resemble the cheesy sets of the old show as well) to call Heckyll. "Sorry, it is after 5 and this is the emergency number so we cannot help you, call back tomorrow," they said. Tomrorow came. At 8 a.m., from a pay phone in 30th Street Station while I awaited my commuter train to Trenton, I called Jeckyll because although they installed my new line, they disconnected my old one. "Oh, we're sorry, we'll take care of that right away." I called Heckyll. "Oh, we're sorry, we'll take care of that right away." I got home that night and guess what? No electricity and... no phone at all! I returned to the pay phones from hell and placed a couple of calls. Jeckyll: "There was apparently some kind of screw-up in Central Office so we can't clear up your phone until tomorrow, sorry." Heckyll: "According to our records your power should be on, did you check the master switch at the meter?" I would have, except there wasn't any. I told this to Heckyll. "Well, we're sorry but we cannot help you. Try calling back tomorrow." Suspecting the switch was in the basement I called my landlord the next day from work. They checked and said they didn't see any switch. (Never trust your landlord to do anything right except keep track of the day when your rent is due.) After enough daytime long-distance calls from Trenton to service the national debt, I finally got a committment out of Heckyll to send an emergency truck that night. The guy came, said my meter was on and that the switch must be in the basement. After calling a very unhappy (but well-off) landlord three times, the electrician came out, went downstairs and discovered that someone had rewired the master switch boxes and had been getting away with pirating electricity out of my apartment for quite a long time - Ah, the honesty of Penn students. To be fair to Bell of Pa. they did reattach my phone promptly and even called me at home to check and make sure everything was working - three days after it was supposed to be. PECO on the other hand was nothing but a problem. With the exception of one Miss Becker, all of the people I talked with seemed singularly disinterested in helping me. But hey, why should they really care? They're a government agency - in Philadelphia no less, the national capital of patronage and corruption - and they have no reason to care. The frustrating part about the whole affair is that there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. Centralized buracracy of any kind is the worst enemy of the customer, be it the government, the University or General Motors. The moral of this story is simple: There isn't one. If you're dealing with a monopoly and they screw you over then too bad. There isn't a damn thing you can do about it. Now don't you feel good? Brian Newberry is a senior Urban Studies and American History major from Wallingford, Connecticut and a former senior photographer for The Daily Pennsylvanian.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.