u/YOSHIMIvPROBOTS

Apologies if this is a too common or unwelcome question, I'm just interested and in my own head about it.

I have a buddy who's retired and kinda disabled who I try to help around the house when I can. Over the past month, he'd been complaining about his lights flickering. He was talking about florescents and I figured they flicker sometimes and I'd never seen flickering so it wasn't a big deal.

I googled the issue and Reddit said 'call the power company before calling an electrician.' I told my friend this.

We're in IL, and Ameren said his weatherhead/wiring was screwed but they aren't responsible for it. Bummer. He then called an electrician who said they can do it, but they may have to also replace the meter.

The three points of this post are:

1. Thank you reddit, for pointing me in the direction of calling the power company. Saw posts saying it could be wiring in the house (which is still possible), but it seems like reddit gave to best course of action.

2. I wanna rant about my buddy. I told this fucker to call the power company last Sunday and he said he would. Today, Friday, I came to his house while he was away and replaced a fixture for him because of the flickering talked about YET HE NEVER FUCKING TOLD ME HE TALKED TO THE POWER COMPANY OR AN ELECTRICIAN THROUGHOUT THE WEEK! I ran a vacuum after replacing the fixture and it started flickering and thought, oh yeah, that's a problem. He came home an hour later and I told him I saw the flicker and he said, 'oh yeah, the electrician is going to fix it.' WTF! Why did you not tell me this?!

3. So what may that cost? It's like a 15 ft high weatherhead. The electrician said they may have to replace the meter, but I hope not. The pipes overall look terrible, but the meter looked fine, imo. (I also just want to rant about him paying for the meter, wtf)