New Building, the good and the bad

Purchasing and moving into a new Commercial Office space has been quite the adventure. It has taken a lot more of my (And my partner's) time then we expected.

In an earlier post I discussed some of the details about the purchase itself. Today I want to talk about some local venders who did a good job; and then some who did not do as well...

In no particular order:

New locks; went great.
I had the locks on the front and back doors re-keyed after the construction project; you never know who has a copy after construction. I got out the phone book and called AAL locksmiths. They came out within one hour and replaced both locks with locks that were keyed the same. They charged a reasonable price and did a great job.

Switching gas and electric into our Company name, was awful...
The developer had the gas and electric in his name during construction. After we took possession Karena called to get the accounts transferred into our name. This was an extremely painful process that involved three things for each account:
1. We had to fax them a bunch of information prior to them switching the account into our name. 2. They both told Karena that she either needed to drive across town that same day and drop off a deposit in person or that she had to pay a fee and do it by phone or online. Both told her that dropping a check in the mail that same day was not acceptable. NIPSCO charged us a $5.95 fee and AEP charged us a $2.95 fee to give them our deposit by phone or internet.
3. Both required a large deposit from us even though we have been their customer for almost nine years. We have never had a late payment and have paid all of our bills promptly for that entire time. NIPSCO required a $295 deposit and AEP required a deposit of $278.
I am not impressed with either company... Both illustrate what is wrong with protected monopolies...

Phone service, OK so far
We decided to use a smaller phone company, CenturyTel, for our phone service. We purchased a package deal with a three year contract. That has gone ok so far...

Porting our current home phone and fax numbers to the new business, easy to port them; difficult to get a new number from Verizon
This has been another adventure. I talked to Verizon about six weeks prior to taking possession of the building. They told me the easiest way to port my number was to wait until the day I moved and then call their 800 number and that it would be a simple matter to give us a new phone number at home. Note that I verified this with two different people at Verizon... We took possession of the building on December 3rd and CenturyTel was able to port the phone numbers on time. I am still waiting on Verizon for a new home phone number... Supposedly I will get it Monday...

New phones and phone system for office, great
We purchased an office telephone system from Overman Telephone Services out of New Haven. They did a prompt and efficient job when installing the new phone system.

New Furniture, this has been the biggest problem yet
I ordered office furniture from InFusion, an office store located downtown. I ordered the items so that they would get here in time for installation on Dec 4th. They are having problems getting the furniture from their supplier; Highpoint. It now looks like I will get it on December 18th... This has slowed things down significantly. The local distributor has been responsive; Highpoint has been terrible. I imagine they are using Just in Time manufacturing and that they missed yet again...

So some good and some bad...

Mike Sylvester