atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Lightening Stirke

Is there any documentation regarding a phone system taking a lightening stike either through the electrical side or the CO side? I need proof to show a customer the results from such a stike.

Not sure about documentation, but it has happened a few time in our area. I have replaced 2 systems due to lightening.

try edco's website

The customers system was location was struck, we only needed to replace a station card and the CPU. One month later, another card was in need of replacing. As of today, the system is working fine, however, they don't want to pay for the second visit. They said we should have forseen the damage from the strike and replaced the entire system.

I would have insisted on a totally new system
after a hit!

Maybe explain it like a doctor would. Lightning is like cancer to a phone system. Sometimes it hits and you fix what you can see is wrong; everything will work fine for a while, but then more damage will come to light that you could not have foreseen. Just like cancer a dr. will do what he can see first, but it may come back later. If I were you I would split the difference from the call and then have him sign a waiver for future visits due to new strikes or new problems.

Also, the problems were more than likely caused by the strike....but maybe they were not. Either way it was a service call with a month in between, a whole moth that it worked propoerly, maybe it just broke...in which case he would have to pay to fix it anyways.

Steve

PS
Over the years we have seen MANY MANY systems get blown out of service by storms...but Florida is known for that!

Thanks for all the info.

You can't win.

This is the type of customer you don't want. At the first visit if you had told the customer "we have to replace the KSU and one CO card but the other one appears to work fine, do you want to replace both cards just in case?", you know the customer would tell you to only replace the one to keep costs down.

It is entirely possible that second card went a month later due to a lightening surge, I see it all the time.

As for installing a totally new system after a hit, I have customers that have had numerous hits. Each time we try something different, hopefully better, for protection. It's always a gamble. If I was to replace everything new each time, I don't think I would be their dealer too much longer!

The most badly damaged phones we ever saw were from a lightning strike. It was a remote building, no protection on the remote end. 6 Norstar phones. 2 actually had holes melted in the circuit boards, the others had a series of diodes completely cooked off, scorch marks all over the boards. There were little bits of carbon inside all of them.
Needless to say, they went back as "not economical to repair".

There is no way to prove the 2nd failure is due to the lightning strike, but its probable. Most likely something on the card was "soften", but didn't immediately fail.

Why don't you comprimise with the customer and eat the labor.

Good luck