No Means No!

I have heard so many variations of this today i just want to begin my spiel with "No matter how much you whine, beg or threaten I do not have the ability to re-set your payment plan unless you make a payment."

If someone has been on a payment plan with us before to pay off a debt and failed it once then we're fine with that, we may try to get some sort of initial payment from them but we aren't very strict.

However once you've failed three times we get a bit fed up, OK, so there are a lot of perfectly valid reasons why someone may fail three times but most of the time they just flat out don't want to pay.

When we tell customers this they completely lose it and insist that we can override it. I have news for every one of you! No we can't. The system locks us out until a payment is taken or it's overridden by a senior manager, who are as elusive as any other mythical creature.

Also, reporting us to the energy ombudsman is not going to help you, they approved every millimeter of our debt collection process.

So, quit threatening to sue me! It's not my fault. And to the guy who said my mother should have aborted me...burn in hell.

The entitled.

Another Friday brain-melter.

I'll dispense with the preamble, it's not interesting, well not very often anyway.

"I got this threatening letter from you saying i needed to pay."

"Yes sir, the outstanding balance on your account has remained unpaid so we've begun taking steps to reclaim it."

"You can't go around sending threatening letters to people! What if i was ninety years old and i read this and had a heart attack?! Hmm?"

Yeah buddy, but you're not, and it's not that threatening, it was reminding you to pay, nothing more.

"Well sir we have very few complaints about our letters."

"I'm surprised, it's absolutely disgusting that you can send things like this to people. You'll kill someone!"

"Well sir, it is merely a reminder to pay, we fin..."

"It says you're taking me to court!"

"No sir, it says..." I retrieve my copy of the letter and read out verbatim "Should the debt remain unpaid we may take further steps to reclaim the amount outstanding including referring your account to debt collection agents who may obtain a court warrant to reclaim the funds." Personally i find that rather polite.

"My letter doesn't say that!" Yes it does buddy, I'm looking at the copy of it on my screen.

"I can assure you Si..."

"It's disgusting!" By now he's shouting, i can almost imagine the veins standing out in his neck and the droplets of spittle raining down on the receiver. "You can't treat us paying customers this way!"

Wait a minute...a fraction of a second lets me open up his account history...Bingo.

"Well sir, you haven't made a single payment since you took supply with us over a year and a half ago, I hardly think you can claim to be a paying customer."

Biiiiig pause.

"You're a stupid fucking bitch! Fuck you and your fucking company." He slams the phone down.

Dear me...

Prepayment woes.

Like I said, Fridays are the carnival of the weird. This customer one one of the entitled people who thinks the world should bow down to them.

"Good morning and welcome to PowerCorp, drone speaking, can i take your account number."

"Uh, sure, it's 12345678"

"Thank you. Right, I'm showing an outstanding balance of £234.56, how can I help?"

"Um, yeah, I wanted to know where it came from because i have a prepay meter."

"OK, i see you've left supply with us and moved to another company right?"

"yeah"

"OK, prepay meters are programmed with the cost of a unit of electricity, if the prices change the meter isn't updated, costs have risen so they've calculated how much you've under-paid and have now charged you for that."

" You can't do that! It's illegal!"

This is something we get a lot, I'll never understand why people think that something which is clearly stated in their contract which is issued by one of the largest power companies in the UK can be illegal.

"I'm afraid it isn't sir."

"Well I'm not paying it! I don't owe that!"

"I'm afraid you do sir."

"But how did i get a debt when I'm on a prepay meter?"

Huh? I honestly thought he'd grasped it the first time round.

"Well sir, prepay meters aren't updated automatically so wh...."

"That's not my fault! I'm not paying!"

"But sir..."

"I'm not paying what i don't owe!"

"But sir, if you'll let me explain..."

"You're not explaining anything all you're doing is lying! I'll sue you all!" BANG....

Well I hope he broke his phone hanging up like that...he certainly broke my hearing for a few seconds.

Account number?....no, that's your postcode.

It would seem that Fridays are the carnival of the weird around here.

"Good afternoon and welcome to PowerCorp can i take your account number please."

"Yeah, i got this letter saying i owe you some money?"

"I see, well if i can take your account number we'll get it checked out"

"But i don't think I owe anything."

"OK, that's fine, if I can take your account number we'll find out."

"Oh, sorry. LTRDC09..."

"No sir, your electricity or gas account number, it's eight digits long, probably begins with 027."

"Oh that! OK, it's 589746891547"

"No sir, the eight digit number"

"Oh, 220408"

"No sir, that's the date the letter was printed."

"Well you are no help at all! Obviously my account number isn't on here or I'd have found it by now."

Sigh "OK sir, can i take your postcode, we'll do a search for your house instead."

"Oh wait, 'Electricity account number' is that what you wanted before?"

Groan "Yes sir."

"Well you should have said so."

Footballers and dopeheads.

Two strange ones today.

I spent a while listneing in again, didn't take any calls as we were strapped for time. However we had a minor server outage and ended up getting calls for our higher value debt department as well as our own. No difference in procedures, splitting them just makes it easier to gather statistics.

Let's begin.

"Good afternoon, can i take an account number please."

"Yup, it's 12345678"

"Excellent, and now can I take your name."

"Sure, it's Mr Jones calling on behalf of XXX Football Club"

"That's fine, how can I help?"

Hang on....back up there, which club was he calling from? I stare at the screen and sure enough, he's caling on the behalf of a 2nd division football club....a multi million pound team! Wow...

The call ends and we wait for another one to come in when I hear another trainee next to me exclaim. "Oh my god!"

I look over to ask what's up and see the debt on their account, over £9000, used in only 3 months.

"How in the world did they get that much?"

The advisr taking the call grinned and called up a note on the account.

"Customer has been arrested after meter reader called and found a marijuana farm in the property, customer had over 50 600 watt lamps, fans and timers running. Please contact letting agency XXX for further issues."

We laughed ourselves silly for a few minutes.

"What a dope, surely he'd realise we'd think something was wrong..."

My colleagues are laughing again.

"What?"

"What a dope?" one grins.

"Up yours."

My first call. Aww.

Two days ago I took my first call in the new department.

I was rather nervous, for many reasons, you never really know what you're going to get, some customers are philosophical about it, some are only phoning to shout.

I squared my shoulders and switched my console over to "available".

The phone rang and I hit the button to pick it up, an automated voice told me which section of our collections cycle this customer was calling from, in this case, she'd received a reminder, one of the earliest stages.

"Good afternoon, welcome to Company, can i take your account number please?"

We go through the preliminaries.

"That's great, I'm showing an outstanding balance of £xxx on your account, how can I help you today?"

"Well I'm not very happy, I received a Very nasty letter from your company today telling me to pay my bill. I found it extremely offensive! If your company had bothered to come and read my meter then this would never have happened!"

Yeah and if you'd read the bit on your bill where it says in bold typeface that your account was estimated and to please call in with a reading then it would never have happened either.

"Very well, I can see that there is a payment pending on your account, it will take a few more days to clear though, so should you receive any more communications from us regarding the debt you can ignore it."

"I should bloody well hope so! And you need to change that letter, it was disgusting! In fact I'm thoroughly disgusted with your service and I'm moving to Company X!"

"Very we*click*ll....?"

She hung up on me.

I switch myself off available and glance over at the experienced advisor who is shadowing me and he grins. "Tough break, but you did well."

I grin.

Back into the breech.

Well Ladies and Gentlemen, my training is nearly over and i'm about to hit our debt collection floor, and already i have tales of wackyness to regale you with.

It's really not been too bad, despite a problem with a manager which i won't go into, you're not here to listen to my woes, you want the good stuff.

So, onwards, let's see what we've got...