Paying for what you get?

Earlier this week, D. got a bill from British Gas. The bill was for £52 and some change. Well, he went online to go pay the bill … and discovered that it was for our old flat. So, he contacted them. After a bit of back-and-forth, it turns out that we owed them for 9 days of usage – from the first 9 days of the quarter – and, true, we shouldn’t be responsible for the whole £52. Did we have a meter reading, or would we like to make a payment based on their estimate of our usage? Well, since it was alleged to be our responsibility to have read the meter before we moved (wherever it was), and we didn’t have a reading on hand (it being 3 months later, and we’d paid them off in order to get our deposit back), we said that we’d just make the estimated payment. How much could it be? Any guesses? 9 days out of 3 months … that’s 9 days out of 90 days … so, the bill should be about 1/10th of the £52, right?

Except we got a bill – the next day – for £26.

Mightily disbelieving, D. got on the phone to British Gas … whose bright-eyed employee said that it was a computerized estimate. Right. This was the wrong thing to tell D., who pointed out the mathematical aspect of the thing; that a “computer estimate” made on a computer has to be programmed by somebody, thus some employee, somewhere, didn’t know how to divide £52 by 10. Having failed to show himself to be sufficiently credulous, D. was now regarded with hostility. The man from BG hemmed and blustered and then threatened D. with collections if he didn’t pay the amount immediately. “Further,” the man said ponderously, “you’ll have to pay anywhere from £14 to £62 extra, if we have to send this to collections.” To which D. replied that he was perfectly willing to pay for what gas we had used, but that he wasn’t going to pay them anything until they could tell us how much we actually owed. “You mean you’re going to risk your credit over £26?” To which D. replied, “Sir, I’m hanging up now,” and then he went forth to bang things around in the kitchen for awhile, chop a few root veg, and then sharpen all of his knives.

He was not a happy camper.

The next morning D. girt his loins and phoned British Gas again, but this time he had the meter reading in hand, having contacted the property management company which had it on file and gave out the information without a qualm. Funnily enough, the meter reading D. had matched the meter reading British Gas took on the day we moved out! Yes. They sent someone out to take a reading, because we told them that we were closing the account. Yes. They had this information all along. So, why were we asked to pay for the full £52? And, after that, why were we asked to pay half of that?

The nice girl from British Gas — using no pressure tactics now — did a bit of investigation, to discover that there’s no new tenant in the property. Likely, it remains as we left it, a dusty, cheerless hovel with a gaping great hole in the wall. The point? British Gas was just trying to get somebody to pay, apparently. The young lady didn’t say as much, but was quite willing to dig around a bit, once she realized that we were going to pay them something. We paid them the £8 we owed then and there.

Just a frustrating episode in our day-to-day lives, but one which has been repeated, with varying degrees of irritation, over and over and over again in our almost two years in this place. On one hand, it shouldn’t surprise any of us that companies want to soak someone for money these days, but on the other, there’s a human element in dealing with these companies that intrigues — and bewilders. It’s like no one is operating from a rule book. Depending on with whom you speak on the telephone when you call, you are as likely to have a generous, kind-hearted soul who sees the “mistake” the company has made, and hastily rectifies it, as you are a loud-mouthed blowhard who threatens you with the law. We’ve mentioned before the questionable generosity of clerks who round amounts owed up or down, fellow employees who offer to ship things home “on the company’s dime,” i.e., for free, and workmen who will take down the fire alarm rather than install a new battery so you’re not “annoyed” by the noise — but your house is no longer up to code. There’s almost a camaraderie, a fellowship of workers “regular joes” happily “sticking it to the Man,” but in these cases, who’s the Man?

We’re pretty clear on how the work-world works back home, and know what to expect. With a general “rule book,” which is roughly a day-to-day understanding of The Constitution, even the most misguided and uneducated of Americans is aware that “I have rights!” — and boy will we squeal when we feel like our rights are being violated. Doubtless in the UK, the individual has rights as well, but we have no idea what they are, no idea what’s acceptable behavior for businesses, no clue if people are telling us the truth when they shrug and say, “that’s just how it is, here.” At times we feel woefully unprepared for life in this kingdom.

– D & T

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