if a contractor holds the power to shut off essential services to individual homes when they receive a fax or email to do so from a billing company and they go ahead and act on those orders without ever thinking about whether those orders are right or wrong regardless of the situations which glaringly stare them in the face sometimes is worrying. are some kiwi workers mindless drones who don't know how to think and say no to their paymasters or at least question the policies they work under. mercury doesn't allow it's contractors to call them and double check details like this before disconnecting. if mercury had encouraged communication between it's office workers and it's out-sourced technicians then the tech would have simply called mercury from his cellphone and told them about the oxygen machine and the office worker would hace cancelled the order to disco surely? why don't mercuty allow the communicated exchange of possibly vital information? are they about efficiency over effectiveness? do they care more about the costs of a few phonecalls and the impacts on their precious profit margins? mercury must pay. the techs must not follow orders they think MAY be wrong. they need to stand up and think twice before doing what soldiers with blood on their hands do -- follow orders without question. this is NZ. you can ask your boss what's going on. you can ask them whether they know about this and that thing that might change their thinking.