How will the power outages affect your mystery shopping? I'm tell people to get a solar charger for your phone. Even if you cannot make calls, you can watch TV shows and movies you've downloaded to your phone.

I have an AC inverter in my car that I use for charging my phone or whatever. They also sell AC inverters that will charge without turning on your car ignition.

I wonder how many shops well get cancelled in those areas of the power outage. This has to cut into the profits of the MSC's.

Why are you using an inverter to charge your cell phone? A car produces DC and your phone is charged with DC. All you need is one of the plug-in phone chargers made for car accessory outlets. I have one that fast charges my S9 to 50% in 30 minutes.

Inverters are notoriously inefficient. In your case, you are inefficiently converting DC to AC, and then inefficiently converting AC back to DC. Why?

@AZwolfman wrote:

I have an AC inverter in my car that I use for charging my phone or whatever. They also sell AC inverters that will charge without turning on your car ignition.

I have also read that charging your phone using your car battery, quickly drains your car battery

Your comment made me want to check out the data. Definitely a thought-provoking comment. So ..

A "small" car battery holds 45 amp-hours of charge. The battery in my Galaxy S9 is 3,000 mAh = 3 amp-hours. So, I could charge my S9 about 15 times using a "small" car battery. The battery in my Ford Escape is 70 amp-hours (I just looked), so over 20 charges for my phone.

Before impending hurricanes (maybe once a decade in this area) and winter snowstorms (about every other year we get one big enough to lose power), I charge my external lithium battery (made for charging phones by Anker and others) which is 20,000 mAh = 20 amp-hours. If you have one of the relatively new external lithium car jumpstarting batteries, they often have USB charging ports and typically start at 30 amp-hours.

Before potential power outages, I also fill up my bathtub so that I can flush the toilet, which I advised my friends in Northern California to do earlier today.

@johnb974 wrote:

I have also read that charging your phone using your car battery, quickly drains your car battery

It's best to just get a solar charger for your phone.

I still wonder if the power outages continue, how this will affect MSC's? They have to be losing a lot of money.

I don't see the issue here unless you intend to walk to your shops. Charge the smartphone as you drive between shops. My one year old galaxy s9+ does not lose charge that fast. The real issue I foresee is that you may not be able to do your shop, because the business you are shopping may not be able to stay open without power. What about traffic lights? Is PG&E shutting power to them too? Or are they just cutting off electricity and gas to residents? I just finished a long route that had several shops in Northern California, and I consider myself lucky with the timing.

They are shutting off all power. The news mentioned several traffic accidents over this.

I would imagine that each area affected will only have power outages for one day or at most two. Some areas might be even shorter. It will likely be much less of a burden than when bad storms...snow, ice, winds, rain, flooding hit other areas of the country. I am pretty sure all the msc have a back up plan that they use for the other places in the country where they actually have varied weather. Most likely they will be able to reschedule a lot of the shops.

I've been reading that in some areas of No Calif, power could be off for up to 5 days.

IRENE LIVES IN LA, MAYBE SHE CAN FILL US IN ON WHATS HAPPENING. I WILL ASK IN GENERAL CHAT.

Probably less than 5% of the state is affected. If you are affected, it is a big deal.

Not so much the power outages as the fires, but IPSOS pulled a bunch of their shops. We have to reapply after the 16th.

@shopper8 wrote:

IRENE LIVES IN LA, MAYBE SHE CAN FILL US IN ON WHATS HAPPENING. I WILL ASK IN GENERAL CHAT.

Irene actually lives in LA county close to where the fires down here in the south are. Yesterday they closed some of the freeways in her area but opened the southbound ones last night. Hard to get around when the freeways are closed...Even harder than when they are open. We usually do not get these fires in LA city. Too much concrete! My sky is blue today but it does get grey when the ash is in the air. The winds must have shifted since yesterday.
Irene hope you are okay. Your air must be very bad.

Down in San Diego, they have been talking about shutting down the electricity for the last couple of days but have not done so yet. I live in a very windy area that was devastated in 2003 but no fires here ....yet. If the electricity goes off in the city the last thing I would do is mystery shop as traffic would be a horrendous nightmare - it is already horrendous. We have got flashlights, water, books and would just hunker down.

I am about 12 miles from Porter Ranch a lovely community that had fires last year and again now. My friends niece had to evacuate and I couldn't do my Whole Foods there due to all freeways being closed. We have a fire 5 miles from me that is 15% contained., my area is built up with no brush, but still, too close for comfort. Yesterday everything was closed the College's, schools freeways, so the town met in Starbucks and we had a
community coffee break that lasted for four hours. No one could work and many drive into the city.
Today the wind died down from 70 miles to 30 miles, that helps and we are told to stay in due to bad air quality, however, I was out doing errands and grocery shopping and all is well and air quality seems o.k., however, I won't get on the freeway as the fire yesterday was jumping across the freeway and they are still putting it out. Looks like the worse is over as long as the wind stays low. No one here lost power although they gave us warnings it
may happen, it didn't, but Porter Ranch had no power......one can always go to numerous places to re-charge your phone, that is the least of our problems when faced with losing your home.....#too close for comfort



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/12/2019 07:30PM by Irene_L.A..

Hello from the hurricane belt, where prolonged power outages after a storm are guaranteed.

It's no fun losing a freezer full of stuff. If they are going to make a habit of this, next year start drawing down your freezer stock before the Santa Ana winds arrive. If they warn you that you might lose power for several days, turn your refrigerator and freezer settings to max cold, and put gallon jugs of water in the freezer. Then fill nooks and crannies with the 17 oz and 2L bottles. Take the stuff you care about and move it to the bottom of the freezer, especially if you have a French door model. It will thaw from the top down and the stuff at the bottom may still be frozen even after a few days without power. If you really want to prep, pull the ground beef out of the freezer. Thaw it, cook it, and refreeze it in freezer bags. Now it doesn't have to be kept frozen, and will be much faster to prepare when you're cooking on a limited supply of propane or charcoal.

And when the power does go out, throw what you need, including some of the cooked ground beef, into a cooler with some ice. Then throw a bedspread or blanket over the refrigerator and leave the door closed. It will help to block any air seeps around the seals and keep it cold or frozen longer.

Or you could have a giant neighborhood barbecue where everybody grills stuff as it thaws.

The whole country is wishing you guys the best.

In sympathy for my neighbors to the north of where I am in Los Angeles my refrigerator kicked the bucket Wednesday night. I woke up to unfrozen food in the freezer so I think the issue must have already begun the day before. The fridge still was fairly cold all day. As an experiment I bought ice and stuffed my freezer with bags of ice and a little food and put the rest of the ice in my Igloo cooler with food. Surprisingly the cooler ice stayed frozen for almost two days but the ice in my freezer with the door closed was melted the next morning. I like the blanket idea. Hopefully there will be no next time for a long while.