White Rabbit

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Sort of following on from last night's post and my previous allusions to energy company issues, I have to say that we are now so far down the rabbit-hole of surreality that I fear for the future of, well, just about everything. I wrote yesterday that we should just nationalise and run properly all of our national resources (I defer to my old man over the eternally-vexed land-ownership question), but our personal, continuing struggle to devine any sense whatsoever from our electricity 'suppliers', whoever or whatever they are, has taken an even more bizarre turn today.

Having agreed by email (I can't get any bugger to reply to or even acknowledge receipt of, any letter I've so far written) with the OFGEM-appointed company who've taken over our account from our previous (gone bust?) supplier [that is still listed as operating at Companies' House] that we would write off the unsubstantiated, unmetered and un-billed 'arrears'; we have received a letter today from a debt collection agency for a not inconsiderable sum of money, allegedly owing on our 'account' with our now energy supplier, despite the fact that they have yet to install their new smart-meter: according to them for non-payment of a bill we've not yet had. If I'm losing you, don't worry I'm confused, too; but it get's worse.

We find that we now have an online bill - sorry, statement of account, which is legally not an invoice, containing no metering information - that states that they have levied a charge based on meter readings (! there have been precisely two readings in the last several years, both recent and from a smart(!*?)meter that hasn't registered more than a tenner's-worth of usage in three years), offset by the same amount: as agreed because of OFGEM's back-billing rules. Added to this there are two further offsets totalling approximately half of that sum again, but leavened by a bottom line that still equals a deficit of account on our side: when simple arithmetic shows that the debit side of the account is the energy supplier's, not ours. 

On top of all of this, as I've mentioned before I think, we were paying - apparently with no records on the original company or the new company's side extant - up to £230/month in direct bank transfers at one point, despite no readings or bills being in evidence. As to the sum being 'claimed' by the collection agency: it matches none of the figures that the energy company have supplied in the 'statement'. I reiterate that we have been trying to sort this out since 2016. The current situation is basically chaos, and we're not alone: there are thousands of people similarly afflicted by this perversion of business practice.

The world of business in the consumer sector frankly appears to be spinning rapidly out of control, with the default position apparently being that no matter what crap appears in front of you, you're expected simply to stump up whatever spuriously concocted amount of money mentioned, on pain of being threatened by yet more money-grubbing 'account handlers': read parasites, ambulance-chasers or whatever other waste of space and resources you can name. All I can say is that if I don't get some cogent answers out of these people very, very soon, I will name names and start shouting from far loftier platforms than this humble little blog. We all deserve better than this shite. Keep you posted...

Comments

  1. Joe Stoner9 December 2021 at 14:57

    Threaten THEM with getting back what you PAID on NO INVOICE mate?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. sideways9 December 2021 at 16:03

      That's the next step in the absence of any cogent response from them...

      Delete

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