Yesterday was one of those days. It did not start out like that. It was beautiful sunny February day and I was happily opening my mail, with not a care in the world.
Amongst the mail was a gas utility bill. Nothing much to worry about there, so I thought. We pay by direct debit.
How wrong could I be.
I opened it and quickly scanned the standard letter. My eyes honed in on the revised standing order payment. It had previously been about £65 per month. It had now jumped to a mere £674 per month. Yes I am not joking £674. I spent a few minutes scanning the page in disbelief, before searching for the telephone number of British Gas, which was in tiny print at the top left hand corner of the page. Typical..
After the usual call centre computerised recordings I finally managed to get through and talk to a very nice lady who I explained the problem to. After a few minutes musings, it seemed that this was not a typing error or a joke – this was what the revised payment was – and in fact my gas account was showing that I was £3000 in arrears.
I had a moment of panic when I wondered whether somehow or other I had been underpaying for years. But when I thought about it – I knew the meter had been read regularly, so that could not be the case.
I was asked me whether I had had anything done to my home in the last year. I replied no. (I am not quite sure what I could have done to misappropriate so much gas),
The customer services lady then looked back through my account. Apparently last April the meter reading had been discounted as “mis read” the figures submitted were impossibly high usage, for a three month period. This had continued to roll over for a further nine months and two more meter readings. No human intervention or computer programme had picked this up though.
So where am I now. Well I have to have the meter checked. I am not sure when this is happening – they are writing to me. If the meter is not inaccurate I will have to pay a further £60 for this privilege. I have been told that the direct debit for £674 has been cancelled for this month. I think I will double check this tomorrow.
In the meantime I have the possibility of paying £674 per month hanging over me and hope that this is some horrible error. It makes me wonder would this error have happened twenty years ago – I suspect not.