Losing Power and Other Things

One of the biggest challenges with medical equipment such as power wheelchairs, electric reclining chair lifts is losing power because of outages or bad wind storms. Other challenges for me as a Deaf person that depends on high speed working and reliable internet for equipment we use such as a Video Relay Service (VRS) other devices we depend on to communicate or use in our “deaf” world. When these internet services are interrupted by power outages, internet or equipment upgrades things becom annoying and worrisome.

This is exactly what happend last week and during Thanksgiving week. First WiFi upgrades. Due to increasing monthly charges, I had to negotiate the current monthy charges. Having no cable did not justify to me the high $113 monthly costs for just WiFi. This negotiation resulted in new upgraded equipment and serious negotiating about other additional adds I did not need or want. This type of service is a huge inconvenience and taking advantage of customers. I asked for a technician to come to my home to setup the new equipment because of my hand dexerity issues and not being able to screw in or unplug the cables and wires. My VRS is also hooked up to the modem and it is very hard to unplug the wires. I was denied having a service technician come to my home. The internet company told me it would cost $100 for this. I felt that it was unfair because I had disability problems with my hands and being in a power wheelchair. I complied with new upgrades, no technician. The equipment sent by UPS. This resulted in 5 days of no interent service once the new equipment was swapped out and many calls with the cable company through virtual agent and using my cell phone. “Which we all know using VRS, FT, other things is not exactly 100% clear”. After the 5th day, I asked for the service technician to cometo my home and would pay for the fees. He did. The technician saw that I was in a wheelchair and listened to my issues. He said, what the internet company did was wrong and very discriminatory. It took him 2 minutes to fix the issue that the main office “forgot” to do. ACTIVATE the equipment! All of these could have been avoided if the technician was sent to my home in the first place and not gouge me for the service.

I called corporate offices for the cable company I use. It was pointless. Everything is answered by a robotic voice and it takes many steps just to get a live person. I explained what happened. Their response was, do you need a techncian to come to your home? Very frustrating, annoying, and lousy customer care. I tried to file a complaint, but was faced with additional customer service crap with both Deaf and Hearing agents. Truly frustrating.

After that fiasco, the power goes out a few days later due to high winds in the area. I am usually ok with the outages, but now that I am in a power wheelchair and have an electric reclining chair lift, no power is very inconvenient. The first reason, I did not fully charge my power wheelchair. I only had 60% battery life left and my electric reclining chair does not operate with electricity. The chair does have a battery backup with two 9v batteries for just a one-time charge to get the chair in an upright position. I would have to change the batteries each time I use it to recline it up or down. It is not convenient for me because of the struggles to remove the 9v battery from the storage compartment and plugging and unplugging the 9v battery is very hard.

I broke the wire trying to change the battery which made things worse. Now I didn’t have use of the chair during the 10-hour power outage.

My cell phone only had 45% battery life. I used some of my power wheelchair battery to charge up my phone so I had a way to communicate. The stress escalated as having no power increased into longer wait times.

After all the issues with no power, I felt I needed to find a better way to charge up my medical equipment I depend on a daily basis. This resulted in many long phone calls, reading and researching the internet to find out what I need for a power source that does not operate using a gas generator. I called the companies that make the two medical equipments use and the lack of knowledge customer service had about the equipment just blew me away. I wanted to see if I could use a Jackery Power Source.

I needed to know the wattage required to charge my power wheelchair and to operate my electric reclining chair lift. Customer or service deparments did not know and kept insisting I plug my equipment into the wall. I said I do when I have power. The devices do not charge or operate on no electricity. Both comapnies told me they do not know anything and to contact Jackery. I did that too, but Jackery needed to know the voltage and amps the power boxes use. I had to read all the manuals, invoices and use the internet to find what voltage and amps both equipment use. you would think the companies that manufacture medical equipment should already have this infomation. Nope, nada and just NO. BUT, guess what, I found the information on the bottom of the power boxes for each medical equipment.

I NOW know exactly what I need after 2 days of researching on my own. The companies that make these chairs should automatically know and guide customers accordingly. Very frustrating and stressful.

After knowing what is needed for the type power source unit, I called Jackery. They told me to get a 500W power source to do a full charge on the wheelchair. The recliner if use only to rcline up or down during power outages would require a 1000W unit. NOT CHEAP!! The 500W is $499 and the 1000W is $1,099. Of course I do not have that kind of money and niow need to figure out how to get one. Power outages are becoming more frequent and I truly need to be prepared.