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...

Happy Chinese New Year!

A friend of mine who read this blog has just seen my latest post and commented: "Happy new year in February? You ought to have gone for Chinese New Year!"

So...

Happy Chinese New Year!!!! Yay!

UPDATE: I've spoken to my friend again and they informed me that they actually don't know when Chinese New Year is, after checking we have determined that it is in fact today!

Talk about serendipity!

Happy new year.

So, happy new year! It's a little late, but better late than never, or something like that.

Anyway, no updates recently because nothing of note has happened, they took us back off phones because it was "Inefficient" so i have no fun customer stories, however in a month i move from my current area off to Debt collection, so we'll see what happens then. I'm bound to get a few fun customers in there.

In the meantime, we ran a cross an account today that was returning reads of 0 all the time. Someone had booked for an agent to go check the meter and return a report to us.

The report came back saying "Property has been demolished."

That's a pretty good reason for not using the gas...

We tried to get it fixed by calling Customer support to get the account shut down, they put us through to property movements, who put us through to property support. Who told us to call back when they were open and cut us off. This took 36 minutes.

So, anyone who gets stuck in a queue for a customer service agent...don't despair. It happens to us too.

Location: Staffordshire, Bangalore.

What is it with customers at the minute and demanding to know where I am?

I have a blatant Midlands accent. Definitely British and yet customers repeatedly and determinedly ask me whether or not I'm in England. For any American readers this is like being called by someone with an obvious thick Texan accent and demanding to know if they are in America or not.

I know large companies outsource a lot but sheesh....very few outsource workers talk with a British regional accent.

One more odd story, of a type we get a lot:

A colleague of mine called a customer to get a reading which resulted int eh following exchange:

(Usual preamble)
Colleague: Would it be possible to get a meter reading this evening?
Customer: Pardon?
Colleague: Can we get a meter reading?
Customer: A what?
Colleague: A reading....for the electricity.
Customer: Pardon?
Colleague: A meter reading (Thumps head on desk, entire department is laughing at him)
Customer: Oh, which one?
Colleague: Electricity.
Customer: Pardon?
Colleague: The electricity meter.
Customer: What about it?
Colleague: Could you get a reading for it?
Customer? A What?
Colleague: A reading....(Entire department is cracking up, other customers are now on hold so we can hear how this pans out)
Customer: Sorry, I'm hard of hearing.
Colleague: (Groan) Ok, I'll send you a letter instead, ok?
Customer: Ok.

Bear in mind, the customer heard all the usual preamble perfectly well, including asking for the first line of the address and the postcode. My colleague guessed that he simply couldn't be bothered to get the reading, however the discussion he wound up having with my colleague probably took longer then getting the reading would have.

Some people go to so much effort to be lazy it's incredible.

It's not winter yet!

So, Sunday 18th of November....and the first snow of the year. I just want to know where our summer went!

Anyway, weather complaints said here's some more idiocy from work:

Mr Entitled wasn't satisfied when I said we'd get the start reading for his account re-agreed once we got a meter reading, which he was refusing to get himself. He demanded a manager call him back with details of what we were going to do for him. Ugh....

A customer and his wife had a five minute argument over where his glasses were.

Two more people couldn't understand that I needed to talk to the account holder because the law says I have to and not because I was being deliberately obtuse.

After introducing myself to a customer he went to get his meter read and I could clearly hear him say to someone else in the room "Some f***ing paki says I gotta read the meter" Unfortunately we get this far too often. For the record, I'm Caucasian, I was born in England and have lived all my life in Britain. My name is Hebrew which is why some people make assumptions. Some day we'll be able to press a "bigoted idiot" button on the phone and the customer's handset will blow up...

One customer gave me her telephone number instead of her postcode when I asked.

Another person demanded to know how I got their number....how the heck am I supposed to answer that?

Far Too Many Jackasses On The Road

Walking to work yesterday I had a little run-in with some random jackass in a car, for some reason, only known to them, they decided to throw a rock at me, it hit me in the head, I'm damn lucky I came away with nothing more than a graze and a small bruise. They thrower also yelled something at me, probably not complementary, unfortunately all I could tell that it was a young-ish male.

I wish I could have seen or heard more so that I could have reported them to the police, they could kill someone! It's lucky I have a thick skull.

Standard Notes

When we've dealt with a customer or modified their account in any way we have to leave a note in the account diary telling anyone who follows us what's been done. Thing is, we have very limited space, so our notes look like an horrendously mangled mess of "l33t" speak, contractions and abbreviations. Here's a sample, original first, then a translation underneath.

As per feas wrn rpt clrd fms rd 12789-a7 6598-a8 10/11/07 as in line with eh. gp39 location

As per the feasibility warning reports (the lists of non-billable accounts we need to fix) cleared the flow management system reads 12789 night rate 6598 day rate for 10/11/07 as it matches previous consumption in energy history. my username my location.

As per feas er rpt canx epps rd 12-a7 589786-a8 11/11/07 as does not fit eh, poss missed mex, sent irl to gain 2nd rd. gp39 location

As per the feasibility error report (more serious problems than warnings but usually easier to fix) canceled the electric pre-payment system read 12 night 589786 day for 11/11/07 as it does not match previous consumption in energy history. It's possible there has been a missed meter exchange, sent invalid read letter to gain a second read. My username my location.


And people wonder why i can't type at the end of my shifts...

Ages Past

So, I'm going to begin my blog by explaining exactly what i do...

I work for part of the Billing department in a major UK power company. We have two main functions.
First we fix accounts that aren't billing properly, this is usually due to meter readings not existing, being too high, being too low or making no sense at all.
Secondly we call customers in the evening to get meter readings for the gas and electricity, and this is where the fun begins. A lot of people can't read their meter, for various reasons, fair enough, but some of the things that confuse them are beyond comprehension.

So, let's have a few examples...

• Called Mrs Jones (All customers will have falsified names, mainly because I can't remember their names by now) She happily confirms her postcode and the first line of her address, but once I ask her for a meter read she gets defensive. "What are you going to use this information for?" she asks. To bill you I reply. "How do i know that you're not a load of con men trying to scam me out of my money?!" er...what? I really want to know how she thinks I can scam her using a meter reading. Oh well.

• Called Mr Brown, he asks if i can call him back in ten minutes because he's just putting his kids to bed. I hang up and call back ten minutes later, he has turned his mobile phone off. Git.

Sometimes it's customer's names that confuse us, for example:

• Mr Jesus Christ God Of Power. No I'm not joking... according to the notes on our system the man truly believes this and once called up and demanded to know why his bills were being sent to his real name. He also let a meter reader in to the property then proclaimed that we could not cut off his electricity because he was Jesus Christ God Of Power, and he would cut off our electricity instead.

• The DEHD. Turns out it's the Defence Estates Housing Directorate, but the name gave us a giggle, especially when we found a note saying "Received a letter from the DEHD stating that Mrs Berkley had moved out and the DEHD took over on that date". For non-English speakers DEHD as a single word would be pronounced dead.

Now and then meter readers confuse or amuse us:

• Can't read meter, puppy in the way.

• Can't read meter, customer has built a wall in front of it.

• Can't read meter, customer answered door naked and refused entry.

• Could not read meter, customer was visible hiding behind a chair in the living room and refused to answer door.

• Checked meter, nothing wrong, customer is taking the piss.

And finally, sometimes it's the customers themselves that make us scratch our heads:

• A meter reader was sent out to check on a meter that wasn't showing any usage for a while, he couldn't get access because the homeowner was out, he left a card and continued on his way. The next note on the account was from a social worker dealing with the customer's affairs, the note said that they believed that there was no usage of gas because the woman had believed that aliens were coming in through the gas pipes at night and had turned it off at the master shut-off. A later not said she had been detained under the mental health act. I felt very sorry for her.

So there we go, just a small sample of the craziness I've experienced so far. I'll update this blog as i encounter more weird and wonderful people.

Who Am I?

So, hi. Welcome to Power assisted.

I've caved in to some odd internal urge to start documenting the wierdness that sometimes happens around me. Let's see how long i manage to keep this up.

So, who am i?

Well, you'll have to forgive me for not posting my name, I kinda like my Job and since a lot of the wierdness I encounter comes directly from that job I'd like to stay anonymous.

What I will tell you:

I'm 21
I'm female
I'm a student
I work part-time for a large British power company
A lot of my customers are assholes (How's that for setting the tone of the blog?!)

There are other things i could tell you, such as my ability to speak three languages, but I'm willing to wager no-one really cares. And that's assuming anyone other than me ever reads this thing...

So, let the posting commence.