I received a letter today telling me I am about to have my water supply disconnected as nobody lives at my address, and has not for
quite some time. Why then, do they send a letter in the first place, and secondly why was it sent to me with MY NAME AT THE TOP OF IT? Now, I am rather easy to
confuse at the best of times, but this one really threw me, so I did what any reasonable person would do. I ignored it for a whole hour, and got so annoyed at
the intrusion that I made the fatal error. I called them.
I explained who I was, where I lived, how long I had lived there (since June 2002) I told them I was all paid up, and that an error had been made, and I was
just letting them know. And he said NO, I DON'T THINK SO. This jumped up bloke simply insisted my property was empty, because his all powerful computer
said so, so my presence in the flat couldn't actually be a factual event, and I wasn't me. His argument got more and more circular and defensive, and
he was not far away from calling me a liar.
As you can imagine, I don't get told this particularly often, so I was temporarily put out, without anything to say, which to be honest, was rather a good
thing as my repertoire at that moment in time consisted mainly of four letter words and the like. To put it simply, I was not amused, life isn't going
particularly well at the moment, and I don't need silly things like this. I got him to put my name and account number into the system and he brought up my
records,, proving I existed. But he said I lived at 104B, which I do, but the letter was addressed to 104 First floor flat. Now, we had a 25 minute
conversation, I kid you not, in which I tried to show him how first floor meant above ground, and my flat 104B was indeed a first floor flat, directly over my
neighbour at 104A. I said that they were not mutually exclusive and they meant the same thing.
He told me that regardless the water would be cut off unless I wrote a letter to them stating that I lived at 104 First floor flat. Surely you need a little
common sense to work in a call centre and it shouldn't take over half an hour to correct an admin error, and I truly do understand different systems work
differently, but shouldn't he have been able to see the coincidence? I didn't appear out of middle air, he had my number that I was ringing from down
on system, and he even confirmed that was the number that was on his screen as we spoke. But he still refused to counter the instruction. Well the letter went
today, so if I have no water over Christmas, let us say I shall be most displeased. Stupid Jobsworth. Still it cheers me in one way, if guys like this can get
a job, then surely it should be easier for the rest of us?
