Utilities Part Four – Smart Meters Again
Posted: Mon 23 September, 2013 Filed under: Anglian Water, Customer Services, Domestic, Utilities 3 Comments »So yes, Saturday’s “installation of smart meters” with Anglian Water turned out to be an utter, total cock-up. About the best bit of the process was that they turned up here first thing, rather than leaving me ’til last thing in the day. Other than that, it was a total clusterfuck.
Despite no less than four calls between myself and Anglian, all of which saying “We’ll be installing the smart meters”, what they apparently actually meant was “We’ll be doing a visit to check that everything’s ready for when we install the meters”. In other words, all it involved was checking that what I’d said was right about the meters not reading the same as the outreaders (nice that they’re so trusting) and that the stop-cocks all work. And that was it.
Fair to say, I was pretty pissed-off. Not at the guy who came round – it wasn’t his fault that his colleagues are incompetent tossbags – but definitely at . It’s been listed now as a formal complaint, and I’m waiting to see what they’ve got so say about it all. Regardless, I see some more compensation in my near future…
Utilities Part Three – Smart Meters
Posted: Sat 21 September, 2013 Filed under: Anglian Water, Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Getting Organised, Utilities Leave a comment »Today, as per the post from yesterday, Anglian Water are supposed to be here fitting new ‘smart’ water meters.
I’ve no idea when they’re coming – the timescale I’ve been given is “Saturday” – nor what will need to be done when they arrive. Nor even how long the work is likely to take. I will be clearing the areas around both meters, to make sure they’ve got easy access, but other than that, *shrug*, no idea what the plan will be.
As such, my Saturday is looking to be somewhat random. They could be here at 8, done by 9, and I’ll have the day to myself. Alternatively, they could get here at 4, be here til 6, and my day’s kippered.
Fortunately, I’m pretty laid back about it all, and not going to get stressed one way or the other. But it does strike me as a pretty shit way of doing business…
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…