@Jaloopa said in WTF Bites:
Universal law of nature: all utility companies will find a way to fuck up every part of anything they do. The simpler it is, the more ridiculous the fuck up will be
Not universally true. My energy supplier is owned by Nottingham Council, over here in the UK. I've been with them several years now. There have been 2 fuck-ups involving them, neither of which were their fault. Both of those fuck-ups were linked, and constitute a minor WTF so I'll go ahead and describe it here.
When I first moved into this flat 10 years ago gas and electricity was supplied through pre-payment meters. This was provided by Scottish Power at the time. Anyone who has come into contact with them will be aware of their propensity for fucking things up. When I first got the power switched on, they had left a £270 debt from the previous occupant on the meter. This meant that £6.50 of every £10 I topped up with went toward that debt instead of my account. I argued with them for several weeks over this and they flat out denied that any such thing was going on. After arguing for a few weeks, I just switched supplier.
I informed my new supplier (nPower) of what was occurring, and they arranged for an engineer to come out and reset the meter. This was not before a further £20 or so had gone toward this fictitious debt rather than my gas supply and the first bill they sent me reflected this, showing a £23 discrepancy between my payments and the amount of gas used. I was £23 in credit on this account. I requested that this be given to me as a refund, as there is no other way to recover it on a pre-payment account. nPower suddenly mysteriously lost all records of the problems with my meter, and refused to give a refund. Cue changing supplier again, but not before writing to the CEO of nPower directly and rasing my complaint. This lead to me getting the £23 refunded, and £15 extra as an apology. I still changed supplier again.
Third time lucky. I changed to RobinHood Energy. Not only were they significantly cheaper than other options (state owned and not for profit, so less overheads) they show competence as well. The new gas and electric cards arrived 3 days before the switch was due with instructions on how to set activate them for the new supplier. The switch went fine, and a couple years passed without incident. I check now and then if they are still the cheapest, and they still are by a considerable margin.
So, toward the beginning of last summer I decided that it was time to change away from pre-payment meters. Using these cost me just under £1 per week in higher standing charges so switching made sense. The only reason I hadn't done it earlier was because I expected to have to pay for the new meter, or at least it's installation. So I contacted RobinHood and asked if they would make this change, and if so how much it would cost me. Turns out they would make the switch and it wouldn't cost me a penny. Great. Lets get this done then.
A couple weeks later the day arrives for the meters to be swapped over. I work mid-afternoon to evening so a morning appointment was arranged. Engineer turns up at 9am. So far so good. Engineer removes the old electric meter and starts to install the new smart meter.
First problem arises. The electric meter is contained in a small metal cupboard, just large enough to fix the meter. The new smart meter is bigger and is not going to fit in this cupboard. Engineer replaces the original meter and says I need to discuss it with my supplier and rearrange the appointment. I discuss it with RobinHood, and we establish that the actual meter belongs to the electric grid people, who are the actual people who sent out the engineer to replace it (paid by RobinHood), while the cupboard it sits in belongs to my landlord, a large housing association.
So I contact my landlord, inform them of the problem, and ask for a discussion on how to resolve this problem. They initially don't want to now. Not their problem. I then suggest that I just rip out the cupboard while there's no meter in it, then the smart meter can just be connected to the wall. Nope, they won't allow this but they also won't get involved in removing or replacing the cupboard. After trying to argue reasonably for a while, I give up and take the nuclear option.
I inform them that their intransigence is costing me money (the just under £1 per week mentioned earlier) and that I will be deducting it from my rent payments until this problem is resolved. I also point out that there is a UK law requiring all landlords to provide smart meters by 2020, so they are going to have to deal with this problem sooner or later anyway. Why not now? It took several weeks, but they finally agreed that it was their responsibility to fix this. Great. I then suggest that they liaise with my energy supplier, because their maintenance guy has to be on site at the same time as the meter engineer. Process is: turn off power. Remove current Electricity meter from cupboard. Remove and replace the offending cupboard with one that will fit a smart meter. Then, fit new smart meter into the new cupboard and switch the power back on.
They flat out refuse to deal with the energy supplier, citing data protection legislation. No amount of pointing out that I will provide them with all necessary information will change their minds. I have to arrange the appointment then inform them of it's time so they can attend. They also demand an exact time, not the 4 hour slots the Grid people provide. I point out to them that their scheduled repairs are in 10 hour slots not exact times, so complaining about a 4 hour slot is rather hypocritical. They object to their maintenance guy having to wait around. I object to the times I've had to wait around for their maintenance guy. I remind them that I'm deducting £1 per week from the rent until this is resolved.
Finally they come up with a 'solution'. It's one hell of an unnecessary bodge, designed to work around problems entirely caused by themselves, but it is what it is. Basically, I'm supposed to wait until the meter engineer turns up, then immediately phone them and they will send the maintenance guy out within 15 minutes. (Yeah. I didn't think this would work either).
So, rearranged appointment. Morning again because of my schedule. I'm waiting around from 8am until 12pm. No engineer. Brilliant. All that strife and hassle completely wasted. So I contact the energy company and my landlord to inform them of the new problem. Turns out the engineer was stuck on another, unexpectedly tricky, job and so I got missed out. Energy supplier, even though it wasn't their fault, gave me £25 credit as an apology and another appointment is arranged.
The day before this new appointment I make doubly sure everything is organised. The housing trust know there's an appointment the next day and their repair team will be waiting for my call. I make a point of telling them that, since the last appointment was missed I will probably be first on the list this time so they need to be ready for the call at 8am. I'm assured this isn't a problem.
Next day arrives. 8am (8:02am to be precise) the meter engineer rings my doorbell. I let him in, and while he's on his way up in the lift I phone the number the housing association gave me. I get an answerphone with a message telling me they don't open until 9am and I should phone back later. How wonderfully fucking useful. When the engineer arrives I explain what's happening. He has a look at the cupboard and establishes that the smart meter is definitely not going to fit. Meanwhile I'm frantically trying to get in tough with the housing association. I manage to get through to their head office, which is open at that time, but they have no idea what I'm talking about, there's nothing on my account details about it, and until the local office wakes up at 9am there is nothing they can (or will) do about it.
I'm having a chat with the engineer at this point, the two of us agreeing that these people are fucking useless. Then he has a brain wave. He actually has a set of non-smart meters in his van that may fit and may do the job, as long as I'm not bothered by the lack of smart capability. I'm not, as all I care about is the lower standing charge for the supply. Switching from pre-payment to credit fixes that, the smart meter bit was irrelevant. So the job gets done, I get my new credit meters saving me £1 a week and most everybody is happy. The housing trust eventually paid me £25 as an apology for messing me around.
The power supplier wasn't entirely happy, they wanted the smart-meter bits, but they are happy as long as they still get paid for the energy I use. Once a month they send me an email reminding me to send them meter readings and I do so. They produce a bill based on those readings and I pay it. All good. Today is actually the first time I forgot to send them a reading. It was due yesterday but I forgot to do it. I was going to do it first thing today, but when I turned on my computer the bill had already been made based on an estimation. This estimation sets it at £2 cheaper than last month, because it's getting into summer so my gas usage is decreasing. The estimated values they've used is almost precisely the actual readings, taken by me right after I saw the bill.
I guess the real WTF here is an energy supplier who are competent, reasonable and helpful, and don't try to gouge their customers.