Marc’s Musings and Random Rants

Victor Meldrew is a complicated chap. The situations he gets himself into are rarely his own fault – they are merely a mixture of bad luck, negative attitude and the right to justice. Recently this has echoed in my experiences of utility companies, namely Seeboard and npower.

Pretty much as soon as I moved into the flat in Bromley I switched my gas and electricity from Seeboard to Powergen as according to uSwitch the latter would be cheaper. I also knew they have better customer service as I was about to find out in more detail. My supplies were successfully transferred to Seeboard some time in March but that is when the problems began: Seeboard transferred me back to them without my permission (an 'ET').

And so it began…

The process of dealing with the ET takes about six weeks during which time you get letters from both parties ("Sorry you're leaving Powergen…", "Welcome to Seeboard…", "Sorry for the mistake…") before it all settles down again. For this to happen once is bad enough, but exactly the same thing occurred less than a month later. The first you know about it is the vague letter from Powergen saying how staying with them can save you money – this letter uses the terminology 'energy' rather than 'gas' or 'electricity' so you easily lose track of which supply is with which company. Then you have to phone up and try and sort it out with both parties (although I should have probably avoided talking to the idiotic robots at Seeboard).

During this whole period you miss out on any dual-fuel or DD discounts and I've only paid about £20 in bills so far this year as the supplier has been so inconsistent and the ET process doesn't seem to generate a 'final bill' from either party.

After having things sorted out for the second time in May and putting a block on the gas with Powergen I received another "we're in the process of transferring you" letter from Seeboard. For the third time, an ET had gone through, even though I thought the block was in place (I had received a "sorry we cannot transfer you" letter from Seeboard at an earlier date when the block must have still been active). This infuriated me (Victor-style). How can this possibly happen again? Surely there are notes on my Seeboard account advising of previous problems? Surely the muppets are fed up of me moaning at them? Obviously not…

At time of writing my electricity is now back with Powergen and my gas should be shortly, but they said that a block could not be put back on the accounts again. I am suspicious that it was not done in the first place.

And so this leads me onto today's story which began when I received a nice letter from your friendly neighbourhood collection agency. I am used to getting these for the previous tenant of my flat (I even got one yesterday – Mr G Clark hasn't lived here for nearly a year) but not for me.

It turns out that nPower have been trying to contact me for a £100+ bill from my previous address and the agency must have dug my current address out of somewhere as nPower apparently didn't have it. Nor my final meter reading or moving out date even though I gave them all of the above months ago. As far as they were concerned I absconded at the end of April… nearly four months after I actually did.

It's not nice opening letters from collection agencies (or in the case of Mr Clark, above, notices of possession removal for goods up to the value of £1700) and I am quite concerned that nPower decided to take that route rather than attempt to contact me directly. After all, they should have all my current details. At least the agency woman I spoke to saw it from my point of view and was not as rude and persistent as Mr Clark's council tax chasing agency.

Rant over. Ooh, that reminds me of a great Family Guy quote:

Dennis Miller on TV: I don't wanna go on a rant here, but America's foreign policy makes about as much sense as Beowolf having sex with Robert Fulton at the first Battle of Antetum. I mean when a neo-conservative defenstrates it's like Raskalnakov filibuster dioxymonohydrostinate.
Peter on Couch: What the hell does rant mean?

Ever tried accidentally typing Seaboard into Google and seeing the top Sponsored result?!

It is encouraging to hear that Bulldog will be increasing the number of customer service centres in response to the pressure from the ISPA after a surge in complaints. Whether the staff training will be up-to-scratch considering this rushed solution is another matter. When I was first having issues with them I asked an advisor why I was on hold for over thirty minutes and he assured me that a significant number of new staff were being trained that weekend and that when I called back during the week, wait time would be no longer than ten minutes… how wrong he was.

Anyway, I got a nice box from them yesterday. Unfortunately it didn't contain the Wireless router they should have sent, but a bog standard modem instead (and a 'why not refer us to a friend flyer': oh, how I laughed). I'm even sure how it got here anyway as half of the address was wrong. Never mind, I'm sure flea-bay will find a use for it…

Part of the reason why Bulldog are trying to sort themselves out maybe because they can see BT and French-owned Wanadoo, amongst others, catching up on the DSL speeds and prices. This week, both companies advised that their entry packages will be (capped) 2Mbps lines and that most existing customers will be upgraded. Additionally, new ADSL2+ LLU outfit Be (warning: pink website) announced that their 24Mbps service will cost less than £30 per month (probably excluding the phone line) – a couple of quid more than my old 1Mbps line! Maybe that's why they skimped on their own Privacy Policy!

After reading about other people's problems with Bulldog Broadband, I'd thought I'd let you know about the issues I've been having.

For those who don't know, Bulldog (a Cable and Wireless company) recently launched an 8Mbps broadband service to the majority of its LLU exchanges. I was planning on signing up to this deal having found out that the local Bromley exchange was supporting this (currently revolutionary) DSL speed.

Anyway, the story goes that I was going to wait for a decent introductory offer to come up when the line speed was offered at (just?) 4Mbps and signed up to a special deal that happened to be going on in the local shopping centre. It meant that I could get the service at a reduced rate for six months, pay just £1 for connection and get a free wireless router. The only problem was that the sales rep, being a third party agent on commission, didn't process my order correctly and the fun began.

The main issue customers have been having is the difficulty to get through to support. Phone the sales line and you'll be through to a human within seconds. Not so for the other 0800 number. I am not exaggerating when I say that the average length of time I have been on hold for is over 20 minutes. The quickest I think was about 12 minutes, and longest over 35. 35 minutes? I just got into the habit of leaving the phone on speakerphone (lucky I have that facility at home and work otherwise I might have done my neck some damage), going off to the loo or getting a coffee, and coming back in time to speak to one of their support robots. That is if you get to join the queue at all, of which you have no chance weekdays between about 11am and 2pm.

E-mail support is just as bad. I received an e-mail after the original order was put through incorrectly telling me that my free modem was on the way. I replied and said that this was the wrong product and that the order had been cancelled anyway. I received a reply to my reply over two weeks later telling me they had no record of the order or something. I can understand the frustration that many customers have been getting in and can appreciate why Bulldog have, under pressure, removed their 'best consumer ISP' banner.

After being on hold in one particular week for over four hours, trying to sort out the issue with my order, I eventually spoke to a supervisor (called Hope, of all names) and about a week later things were sorted. Only a couple of issues still remain, such as the line dropping off every-so-often and my wireless modem not turning up yet. But I live in hope!

In case you're interested, the supposed 8Mbps is being reported by my router as 5184Kbps downstream and 576Kbps upstream. Don't think I can complain about that upload speed – it's faster than most entry-level broadband download speeds, but the download speed has decreased since I reported problems with the line…