An employee of a utility

scot_lad1982

Al_Mac wrote:

Just gone up to £130 a month for them both:eek:

Must install the low energy bulbs I bought:o

Call centre staff are human.

I always get their name, write it down, be polite and say thank you "name" for your help, at the end.

Sometimes they seem a little shocked:p

OMG see the problem with any company is that they underpay their staff and expect 200% for it. No wonder errors occur in bills.

If you didnt know folks, there is a new watchdog /ombudsman for you. Compensation of up to 5K....but would need to be a really good complaint. Details will be on your next bill.

For bills generated after the 3rd of July; if someone has not been billed for 2 years and hasnt been their fault, the power company are not allowed to bill you for it. Though anyone affected before that date need to pay, though can get a reduction. Next year the rule will change to anyone not billed for a year will not have to pay.

Any questions, just ask.

Cheers

zorber

The problem is as a call centre employee unfortunately you are paid to here the voice of the customer and though it is not your fault when your company does sill little things that annoy and agrevate, unfortunately people vent at you as they can vent to other direction.
I work in retail and part of my job is to pick up customer complaints and resolve them, i know how hard it is especially when they vent at you, i am quite rude and blunt if they vent by saying i have not caused the problem but i am here to assist and try to resolve the problem to their satisfaction but if the want to continue to vent i do not have to listen and they can sort the problem them selves, it usually solve the venting issue.
So any way i do try to restrain my selve from having an easy pop at some one as it really isnt their fault. the last two occasions i have been nice as pie then put the phone down and vented to a dead phone. where as one was my cooker order accidentally being cancelled (idiots) and the other was edf power doing a yearly review of my gas bill, i only pay £18 per month Direct debit and in this review over the year i have used slightly more than this per month so now i am a total of £7 in debit to them. Their response we need to put your monthly direct debit up to £27 per month. (50% increase????)

Phone up girl at edf, she check it after i explain she say actaully computer is telling her it should be more per month. i laughed at her an asked her to explain why then. (she is obviously trying to make me think that £27 is good)
She said it was worked out with the new price increases when i questioned this again by saying so you prices have gone up by 50% then she worked out the monthly amount manually it came to £20 permonth with the new prices.

I told her then due to her company try to rip me off i didnt care what she now said the monthly amount would be i would now be switching suppliers, if they came out with an acurrate figure in the first place, rather than try to gain a constant positive balance on my account i would not have minded.
but this is just stupid, they did this to my electric several months ago as well.
So for the OP if companies were not so incompetant we would not have to vent at you, dont blame us, Blame the people you work for!!!!!:mad:

byteme_3

Prior to my house move last August (3 bed running oil and electricity) I was paying £55 pm on Electricity (cook electric heating and water by oil)

God what a shock on the economy 7 with heatwise, my bills have gone through the roof (heating - GAS, Hot WATER Electric economy 10 type)

I am not surprised some people get angry, I did today when I (for the 4th time ) approached them re the consumption on the heatwise (dubious name) system after I received a bill of arrears £827!! Was I P...ssed? I have been trying to get answers about this tariff as to 1) When does the cheap rate apply and does it cover appliances and the amount of variations of information I got did not answer the questions sufficiently to work out where all this elec was going until today. I have turned off my immersion heaters at the airing cupboard - it seems they are NOT on a timer and go permently heating away and sucking up enough elec usage for a holiday in 30 degrees for a week for 2!!

You think that PowerGen would tell you the immersion could be either on a timer, on all the time and the appliances may or may not be wired in, you need to call an electrician to definatively confirm what is happening.

Further disgusted as when I approached them re the "debt" (they had not approached me) they suddenly demanded (yes demanded) increase of the DD to £130 pm (an increase of over 100%) As I pointed out, the bill had arisen due to the vague information provided by them not enabling us - their customer to be able to track the source of consumption and that I was approaching them once again not the other way around.

Sometimes faced with this kind of response, is it any wonder we rant and rave? I am sure it is all down to communication on both sides, but if PowerGen don't fully disclose the tariff information (even on their website or clearly on the bill) surely they should be helpful when the customer finds a debt bigger than they can pay within 12 months?

scot_lad1982

To the 1st person who uses 20 quid a month with edf then you are quite lucky. The calculation of direct debits are something of a sore point with customers. If I had it my way I would do away with direct debits as a fixed monthly amount based on annual consumption and change it to a tariff where the customer could pay 3 monthly amounts then clear their quarterly bill.

If it had been me on the phone to you and you were moaning about £27.00 I would have told you your annual consumption in kwh and mulitply it by the unit price before going on what my pc said. Then take you debt and divide it by 12. Since you have only a £7 on your bill then it does amaze me why edf wanted £27. I doubt they are intentionally doing it to rip you off. If you ended up in credit, then you would have had it refunded.

I do not take the insults on the phone personally. I tend to let them rant and be totally calm and wait for 5 seconds to pass then wait for the..."hello you still there" then take control of the conversation. In my company if someone asks for a manager or advises they are going to energywatch due to a complaint then I try and resolve it. More the fool me, but then again I have only passed 2 calls this year to high level complaints and appeared on the energywatch defect report twice. One of which was not valid and the one that was, was due to a customer hanging up before I could resolve it and I was on the account last. So for all you people out there who run to energywatch for silly things then you could cost someone their job when they didnt actually do anything wrong.

For the 2nd person.

The hours of E10 of E7 are 10pm and 10am. This is set by you local energy provider and can vary. If you are on E10 then its 10 hours and 7 for E7.

If there is fault with your timing device then this can be classed as a dispute. Your supplier would have to remove the meter and work out your consumption on your new meter and apply that to your bill. Good luck getting it resolved, this one seems a hard one to fix but not impossible.

Hillfly

scot_lad1982 wrote:

Its all back to treating people how they like to be treated. That I am sure you would agree with.

It's a shame some companies don't always remember that!


As an ex employee of both Powergen & Bgas i know who's ultimately to blame for all this - the government. They rushed the de-regulation in their attempt to get away from the monopoly position and created a monster. The industry is so complicated it's no wonder it struggles.

All the d-flows etc etc......

and now it's impossible to get agreement to fix the problems as all the players in the game have different aims and want to achieve diferent priorities.

Ultimately it's the customers who have suffered - as well as the poor old call centre folk!

scot_lad1982

I totally agree with what you said.

I know thats what happened in this country the consumer wanted choice in everything and then they got it and we couldnt see what was going to happen. Now we have suffered from deregulation and we can't go back. Deregulation was supposed to create competition making prices go down and better customer service...well we all know that hasn't happened.

Bring back the old electricity boards thats what I say :-) hehehehe

For those poor customers out there who have suffered or are suffering from a missing flow when changing supplier, you have my sympathy. You probably think....what is he going on about. I am not going to bore you but its when you continue to be billed for more than 45 days after you have changed supplier. The previous supplier still think you are with them and the new supplier can't bill you. Its a nightmare. Thats one of the problems deregulation brought with it.

Anyways, this will be my last posting for a while.
:rolleyes:

LittleJo

Hi,
Only one thought on denationalisation.
Who owns our energy and water companies now?
Jo

irnbru_2

LittleJo wrote:

Who owns our energy and water companies now?

We still own Scottish Water