Utilities Part Two – Anglian Water
Posted: Fri 20 September, 2013 Filed under: Anglian Water, Charm School, Customer Services, Domestic, Finances, Getting Organised 2 Comments »Following on from yesterday’s post about nPower’s abysmal customer service, I’ve also been dealing with Anglian Water for far too long since moving in to the new place.
It’s not been anything quite as drastic as the farce with nPower – at least Anglian got my name right from day one. It’s just they’ve never managed to get my bills right.
Part of the problem is the metering setup. For some godforsaken reason, my house (and the others in my section) all have two meters: one for the main property, one for the separate outbuilding. This seems to cause them no end of confusion – my first meter reading, they managed to put the same reading in for both meters which overcharged me on one by some sixty units! Since then, despite no end of times telling them the outbuilding one only has a washing machine in it (and is thus epically low on usage) every damn bill or reading needs to be done twice, because they don’t believe the first one. (Personally I’m not keen on what this also says about their attitude to their own meter-reading people, but we’ll leave that for now)
Compounding this has been an ongoing issue with their ‘outreaders’ – little grey boxes that (supposedly) connect to the main meter, and mean the meters can be read without the person needing to access my property. Except that
- Some twat decided that they should both be situated within the courtyard bit between house and outbuilding. Yes, the bit with no access from the outside, without going through the damn house. #slow_handclap right there.
- At no point have the outboxes read the same as the actual meters.
I’ve had Anglian out twice to have the outreaders recalibrated to the meters now, so one would hope they were working. But no…
Back in July I had a meter-reading done. It was one of the days I wasn’t working, so that was fortuitous. And then I expected a bill – it normally comes in August. Nothing. So I called them this week to find out what was happening – the last thing I want on my record right now is a “late payment” flag, particularly for a utility company.
Only they hadn’t sent a bill. As usual, the outhouse’s meter reading had tripped all their flags, so they needed to check the reading. (Done by a person, don’t forget) I said I’d do a reading that evening, and then they could sort it out. I also said I’d do both the outreader and the meter itself.
Lo and behold, the outreaders are under-reading by about ten percent. The meter on the house says 98, the outreader says 88. The one on the outbuilding says 22, the meter says 25. Yep, they’re still buggered then. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind their readings under-reporting by 10% – except I also don’t want hassle at some future date when someone reads the meter instead of the outreader, and suddenly I’m getting hit (again) for 50 units more than I expected.
They’re now coming out on Saturday to fit two ‘smart meters’, replacing the existing meter and outreaders. Supposedly these ones upload straight to a website, so I can monitor the usage and see if there’s a problem. Considering the issues so far with them, you can be damn sure I’ll be keeping an eye on those reading for the rest of the year!
Utilities Part One – nPower
Posted: Thu 19 September, 2013 Filed under: 1BEM, Customer Services, Domestic, Finances, Getting Organised, nPower, Utilities 2 Comments »Since moving in to the new place, one of the banes of my life have been the utility companies for the property.
nPower in particular have been stunningly shit. It’s taken them eighteen months to get the name right on the account – the letting agency notified them of the change, and they did nothing. I’ve gone through the process no less than six times, sending ID and proof of tenancy, and it all disappeared into the black hole of “Fuck-All Happening” that seems to define nPower. Even their complaints team were so bad that they didn’t even call me within the expected timescale, despite repeated requests. The best one was emailing the proof documents the fifth time, putting on ‘read receipts’ etc., and getting one back saying “The message was deleted without being read“. That was when I started getting really pissed off.
Additionally, because of ‘moving to a new system’, they managed to not send me any bills – and not be able to send bills, because gawd knows, I asked! – for a year. I then got four bills in a day – all printed on the same day, all sent out, all for different amounts. And all with one week in which to pay.
It appears to have now been sorted. I totally lost the plot, and requested that they just send me a “we can’t be arsed to fix the problem” deadlock letter so that I could take it up with the Energy Ombudsman and get them properly screwed over. Suddenly I finally got through to nPower’s one efficient person, and everything was done within twenty minutes, with her not even being able to understand why it had taken so long. I think her phrase “Well I can see that someone put the documents in the system. They just didn’t bother to do anything else with them” pretty much sums up the entire painful process with nPower.
I’m going to wait for the next bill so I can see whether they’ve finally got things right or not. I’m remaining pessimistic for the moment, but who knows, maybe miracles do happen on occasion…
Replacement Card
Posted: Thu 29 August, 2013 Filed under: 1BEM, Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Finances Leave a comment »On Bank Holiday Monday, I went out and about, and used my debit card to get some cash out of a cashpoint (ATM, Hole-in-the-Wall, whatever) at a branch of my bank. The card slot looked a bit odd, but both machines looked the same, and I know Barclays love to piss about with how their machines work. So I thought nothing of it.
However, about twenty minutes later I walked past a different Barclays cashpoint (why they’ve got them in multiple places in the town I don’t know, but such is life – this one was in the wall of a WHSmiths) and its card slot was different, and didn’t have the bits that I’d wondered about on the ones at the branch.
As a result, I called my bank, and cancelled the card. Bit of a pain in the bits, but far less inconvenient than the potential for losing money to dirtbags and having to find it. I was expecting it to be a week before getting the replacement card – that’s about normal, and didn’t cause me any real problems – but just a pain in the bum.
Anyway, I’ve got to say I’m impressed. The card arrived yesterday morning. Two days for production, printing, whatever, and sending. I know it’s how things should work, and it’s still pretty sad to be impressed by something that’s just being done correctly, but in this one, well, all fairness to Barclays, they’ve got something right.
Lack of Service
Posted: Sun 25 August, 2013 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Public Transport, Travel Leave a comment »While out in the car today, I heard the weekend’s local travel news.
Among other things, it appears that there are no trains at all running between Milton Keynes and London all weekend, due to “Planned Maintenance”. On a Bank Holiday weekend, with things like Notting Hill Carnival, Leeds and Reading festivals, and many other things. So yeah, let’s cancel (or at least disrupt) all the public transport to get there.
Even London Underground is prone to it…
I know that the thinking on this is all that the long weekend means that work can be done without needing to think about the penalties and reimbursements that need to be made to season-ticket holders (which is why none of the planned work takes place on weekdays) but it still sucks balls for those of us who want to visit London (or even just go through it) on a weekend.
Replacement Glass
Posted: Wed 21 August, 2013 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Driving, Insurance 8 Comments »Last week, when I was driving over for the interview in Cambridge, the windscreen got hit by a stone thrown up by the car in front. It chipped the windscreen pretty seriously, although it didn’t crack or break. It’s been annoying me since – it was right in my viewline – but I didn’t have a chance to get it repaired ’til today, due to doing lots more driving and commuting to office etc.
Getting hit by a stone like that is quite a sobering experience – or at least it is if you think about it a bit. You realise just how piss-poor your reaction time truly is. OK, it’s a closing speed of 140mph-ish (stone coming towards me propelled (I assume) at 70mph-ish from a vehicle travelling at that speed, towards a car travelling towards it at 70mph) but still, you see a blink of something coming towards you – indeed, in this case directly at you – and then the impact. You haven’t even had time to flinch. I assume that when it’s bigger items (you know, a car coming towards you, for example) you’ve had a bit more warning, a bit more time to prepare, but I don’t know. Honestly, I hope I never find out.
Anyway, this glass repair had to be organised through the insurance company this time, rather than the age-old technique of finding a company doing it in supermarket carparks. (It turns out that this used to be fine, but then became a nightmare of companies doing the same, invoicing insurance companies, and generally just all going to cock. Now the industry has entered the world of approved/preferred suppliers, organised through third parties etc. etc.) So all arranged for today.
They’ve tried to just repair the chip, but that hasn’t taken, for whatever reason. (Personally I think Saab glass has some weird coating on it that doesn’t like rubber suction cups. I know my SatNav has always had problems sticking to the glass, and on this occasion the equipment in use with suction cups was also failing to stick.)
So now I’m getting a full replacement windscreen. Bit of a pain in the tits, but at the same time I know there were other (far smaller) chips, so at least with a new screen it’s clean of issues and damage. I suspect it’ll be weird for a couple of days, having a completely clean screen. It won’t last…
Data Migration – Kindle
Posted: Mon 10 June, 2013 Filed under: Charm School, Customer Services, Domestic, Finances, Geeky, Getting Organised, Technology, Thoughts Leave a comment »By contrast to the ease of migrating data to the new laptop, resyncing a new Kindle is an absolutely shite experience.
The actual purchase/delivery of it is great – ordered on Friday, arrived today. But synchronising it is crap.
Rather than a simple “download everything” option – or even having a “download everything on this page” – you have to choose to download each eBook individually. Even on the website, it’s a list with individual controls. Not even a checkbox against each item and a ‘download all’.
Why? I’ve no idea. But it means that what should be a simple “connect this device to my Amazon account” to download everything becomes a nightmare of (in my case) roughly 1,000 mouse-clicks. That’s no exaggeration. I’ve got 260 books on my Kindle. For each one you’ve got to click on “Actions”, then “Download”, then Select the device (there’s only one device – at least fucking auto-select it!) . For each book.
It’s a truly painful and shit experience, and there’s an email going to Amazon to explain that.