Adversities of life in the 21st Century

In October 2006 I was sent an energy efficiency survey from Scottish Power. I dutifully completed it and when I got to the section on heating, my heating system was not listed, I therefore included photo's and manufacturers information on my heating system. I returned the said forms to Scottish Power. Soon afterwards I got the results.

I am going to tempt fate again and go for another holiday in my caravan starting from tomorrow. I'll post the resultant energy expenditure when I return next week.

As another week fades from view, my friends at Scottish Power seem very reluctant to talk to me. I have had no snail mail, no email or telephone calls. They promised to visit to have a look at the shared cablehead - indeed they told Gordon Brown our local MP that it was almost a matter of urgency, so much so that at least a month has passed and no-one has been to look at the cabling.

Incidentally my neighbours at 108 who's house is the site of the main cable head, and who have had the same problem for years, tell me that Scottish Power wanted them to pay £135.00 per month. That is equivalent to £1620.00 per year. Nothing too drastic about that you might think, however my neighbours are both Pensioners in their 70's, and don't use things like games consoles and such. They do however have gas central heating.

Without a doubt, my best friend at Scottish Power has to be Martin Broddigan (an expert in billing) apparently. He said we should get an independent examiner to determine the accuracy of my meter. I said that there was nothing wrong with my meter. He said that we should get it done to rule out a meter problem. I said that I had already ruled the meter as not being problematic. He insisted. However, he was only insistent because the form to get an independent meter examination contains the words 'legally binding' and that is all he was interested in. I filled out the form obliterating the words legally binding and returned it. Now I know that the act of scoring out these words is irrelevant, however he may be a billing expert, but he has little to no understanding of english. My original complaint from around October 2006 does not contain any reference to a faulty meter, only to a faulty system. Therefore his sought after 'legally binding' isn't relevant in this case.

A couple of years ago Scottish Power sent a Customer Services Representative called Johann Ellis to visit my house to see what electrical equipment I was using. At the time I was still on the White meter "Cheap Electricity" con scheme. She toured my entire house from the sofa in the living-room, and said she did not think that I was a particularly high user of electricity. However somewhere on her way back to Scottish Power HQ she either fell and bumped her head or walked into something very solid and heavy or had some other catastrophe which caused a permanent amnesia, because she told her bosses that she thought it was possible that I used a high amount of electricity. She also told them that there was no evidence of anyone tampering with my meter, a feat of truly amazing cerebral powers since she never looked at nor asked to see my meter.

A more recent addition to my circle of friends at Scottish Power is Jose Luis Del Valle an apparent Chief Executive. He wrote a letter which provided proof positive that he had not a clue about what I was actually complaining.

Not so long ago my wife received a telephone call from a fellow called John Tullen. He proclaimed to be a representative of Scottish Power. He tried to tell my wife that our heating was responsible for our high bills. He tried to tell her that a thermostatically controlled heater ran at a constant rate all the time it was switched on and that it did not switch on and off maintaining a temperature range, despite us hearing it do so. He then proceeded to confuse himself by saying we should switch 1 heater off and we would see a difference in our usage. She replied that there was no difference as we had already tried this. He responded by saying that this is because our other heaters would be working harder to compensate. So why did he even bother to say we would see a difference if he knew we would not?

when I came home from work that day, my wife told me about her conversation with this clown. When she said that he blamed our heating for the high bills, I suggested that she should have pointed out that we had only had this heating system for 1 year and that we had had high bills for seven years and ask him to explain the temporal anomaly which allowed a 1 year old heating system to cause high bills for the previous seven years.

About 2 years ago, my neighbour at 108 had a small fire in his electrical cupboard. This was apparently due to the neighbour at 106 having a new electrical shower installed. This resulted in her main cable being burned out - not in her house, but in our mutual neighbours house 108.

I asked my utility company, also known as Scottish Power, about a shared connection. My question seems to have fallen on deaf ears, as they have never given me an answer.

A very interesting fact I passed onto my utility friends was that in April last year my family and I went on a four day caravan holiday, leaving the house empty. During that four day period we managed to use 110 units of electricity in an empty house. Now this does not sound much, but if you consider that an average UK household would use between 36 and 60 units in the same period then it looks somewhat high! My utility buddies can't see this.

My utility company were supposed to send someone to check the shared cable head at the neighbours house 3 weeks ago, but seem to have gotten themselves lost on the way here.

This blog is my opinion and my opinion alone regarding the management of a complaint I have against one of my utility companies.

During a recent visit to Uswitch.com, I typed in my details relevant to my situation back in 1999 when the trouble started i.e. single person living alone in an all electric, 3 bed-roomed, mid terraced house, with average insulation and did not cook every night. The outcome was that at today's higher prices I would be expected to pay around £435.00 for the year. I paid that for the quarterly period between June 1999 and September 1999. I also paid the same again for the quarterly period between September 1999 and December 1999. Since then the situation has deteriorated. Until you get to my current situation which is - despite having low energy lightbulbs throughout my house, and "A" rated energy efficient appliances throughout my kitchen - only used on economy settings, my utility company wishes me to pay £269.50 per month for 14 months (£3773.00) to cover my electricity usage.