Don't you just love companies with "automated" systems that have
automated all the common sense out of the process?
A few months ago I changed banks. One of the things the new bank did
for me was move all my direct debits and send letters to the relevant
companies. Most of these went smoothly, but the local council didn't
get the letter (or at least they "have no record" of receiving it), so
I ended up getting a red letter and had to pay the outstanding amount
and set the DD up again. A minor hitch, but no big deal.
Last week I received a red letter from the water company (I have two
water bills to pay - one for the company that supplies the water and
the other for the company that takes it away). It seems they had
slipped through the net too and hadn't been taking money from the new
bank. My payments were normally around £10 a month but I now owed
about £65. No big deal there - the bill had details of how I could
set up a direct debit through their website, which I promptly did.
Yesterday I received a confirmation letter saying that the new DD was
now in place. But it then said that they would be withdrawing £65 PER
MONTH and gave me the dates from January to April that the withdrawls
would be made. Well that clearly wasn't right, so I rang the phone
number on the bill.
The guy that I spoke to seemed to have a severe case of "computer says
no" syndrome. He explained that the higher payments were because I
had gone overdrawn and the payments were to put me back into credit
and that the payments were going to stay the same until OCTOBER! He
didn't seem to be able to comprehend that the first payment would put
me back to zero and that by October I would be about £550 in credit.
The only alternative he could offer was to bill me every time my meter
is read (every few months, but he seemed pretty vague on the
interval). I just wanted monthly payments around the £10 mark like I
was paying before.
Eventually he agreed to my suggestion that I make a one-off payment on
my debit card to pay the outstanding amount and then he could put the
DD back to £10 a month like it used to be.
Grrrrr.
Crid
(Turning into a grumpy old man)
--
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
