On Sunday night, August 15, 2010, my lights flickered. A few minutes later there was a flash like from a camera. A few seconds later there was a second flash. My husband turned the lights off. He thought a bulb was about to blow. A few seconds later we heard a sound coming from the entertainment center. A few seconds later we heard another sound and smelled something burning. My husband unplugged everything. He plugged everything back into another surge protector. The Nintendo Wii and our dvd player with surround sound would not work. The TV and the Dish Network box both work. A few minutes later we realized it was getting hot in the house. We checked our central unit and it had quit. The air conditioner repair man said we had a power surge. I called the electric company and they said it was a loose neutral and sent 2 men out. They could find nothing wrong on the pole or at the meter box on the house. We called an electrician who checked our breaker box inside the house and all our outlets, and he said he could find nothing wrong. What should we do?

Where did the flash come from? Indoors or out?

I'm not surprised they looked for and claimed they found no problem. They may have said that out of concern of liability. Without admission it would be upon you to prove otherwise. Its actually very common in the business world to find and fix a problem after being informed of one... but to say nothing was found when they checked even though something was and it was corrected. Particullarly when its (the repair) is NOT being billed to a third party.

Conversely your electrician may not have found a problem as it may have been making a good connection when he was there and checked. From personal experience the hardest problems to find and fix are those that are intermittant and reported by a customer that you have not witnessed yourself. If a problem can't be repeated, its next to impossible to track down.

The flash came from my light bulbs in my ceiling fan as far as I know. It was over so fast it's hard to say.

Another possibility is a fried animal. This may or may not be on your pole, but others should have been affected.

Mack, did any neighbors experience the same thing? May be the transformer about to go.

No one experienced any problems. Electric company employees did not find any fried animals.

Bet they found and fixed the problem without admitting fault. Worked several places where if you find and fix it without anyone else knowing what was really wrong... you kept quiet about it.