Sunday 16 September 2012

Lights!


Something that never ceases to astound me: the sheer amiability of the public in the face of everyday corporate shenanigans. 

We may well get all huffy about the likes of Barclays being scum, and some of us are only too fond of acting all Little Hitlerish with the poor sods we interact with every day - witness the prickish behaviour of anybody in a Lacoste polo shirt towards the staff in their local supermarket - but the rest of the time we’re just rolling over like a nervous Yorkshire Terrier and letting the bastards shaft us. 

For example: I used to pay my energy bills once a quarter. The bills would arrive in the post, I’d look at them and swear a bit, then I’d either send a cheque or nip into the bank and pay them off. 

Then, one day, the energy people said “We’ve all got this internet lark these days, and bank accounts and all that, so if you want us to keep supplying you with gas and electricity so you stay warm and you can read and watch telly and use computers, you’ll have to set up an online account and pay us that way.”

But that was okay because every quarter it saved me the bother of writing a cheque or nipping into the bank to pay them off. 

Then, one day, the energy people said “Ah, what happens now is that we need you to set up a direct debit so we can take money out of your bank account when it’s due. Don’t worry, we won’t screw you over.”

But that was okay because I kind of trusted them still. 

But then the energy people said “Well, what’s going to happen now is that we’re going to look at how much power you use, and we’re going to average that out over the next three months, and we’re going to take an amount of money out of your account each month so you don’t have really big bills in the winter.”

And that’s when the shenanigans started. 

The energy people revised the number of times they revise the amount of power you use; it’s gone from quarterly to bi-annually. And the amount of money they take is the largest amount rather than the average. Because of that, my monthly payment has gone up by around 200% in the last three years. Admittedly, my usage has increased - there’s a bloke sitting using a computer or watching television all day every day and well into the night these days - but not by that much. 

Now, I get a statement - not a bill - every six months. It’s a pdf. It tells me how much I’ve used in the previous six months and how much the energy people estimate I’m going to use in the next six months. Every time I get one of these statements I’m in credit, sometimes to the tune of a couple of hundred pounds.

What this means is that the energy people are, for all intents and purposes, sitting on my money. My cash has been taken by them out of my bank account, has been put into theirs, and is essentially lubricating their cashflow while chucking sand into mine. 

So if they’re holding on to (let’s say) three hundred quid of my money, how much of yours have they got? And if we multiply an average amount per customer by the number of customers they have, we’re looking at a very large amount of money being held by the energy people. Money that’s earning them interest, either as it’s held on deposit or as it’s being used for expenditure that otherwise would be financed by interest-bearing loans. 

But we’re not getting interest from them. All we’re getting is reams of figures designed to confuse the layman into thinking it’d be far easier to leave things as they are. By leaving things as they are and not kicking up a stink about these free loans we’re giving to very large corporations, we’re letting them take what is rightfully ours. 

And I think it’s time that stopped. 

So I’m going to ask for my money back, plus the interest it would have earned if it had stayed in my bank account. 

I’ve just phoned the Customer Helpdesk of my energy people, and spoken to a very friendly lady whose manner audibly froze when I outlined what I was looking for. She said she’d get someone to call me back very soon.

I’ll let you know how it goes. 


Next: Culture.

1 comment: