How do I get SSE to sort this out for me?

After the tenants

Sorting out the gas and electric

As the tenants were in debt with the utilities they were put on a meter to recover costs at £6.00 per week. I didn’t ask for this, nor was I notified, but to change it back and to be able to get the electric and gas back on I had to prove I owned the house by providing a copy of the deeds. I had to get my mum and dad to drive from Monmouth to Malvern with a copy and then spend £20.00 on the mobile phone and walk round the shop twice, once to clear their debt then the second time to load credit onto the account. By the time I’d completed this task and begged the local shop to let me pay by card as I’d withdrawn my cash allowance for the day to pay the locksmith, was 4 hours later.

To put the gas and electric back onto the meter I have to pay £52.00 and have a credit check run on me. Erm bit difficult that as I haven’t lived in the UK for nearly 3 years and I don’t see why I should have to pay for something I didn’t request to MY property. So when my new tenants move in and wish to have constant power supplied to the house without topping up I’ll have to refund the costs to them, which TBH, just isn’t fair.

In the meantime I’m back in South Africa and we are trying to rent the property out. As you know it’s rather cold in the UK right now and the rental agents need to put the boiler on frost setting and the last viewing was done by torch light.

I need to put the electric and gas back on a meter. It’s ridiculous the efforts I’ve gone to, to sort this out. I’ve just tried calling them and after a few minutes I realised it’ll cost me much more than the £20 that I spent sorting it out the first time.


 

*As of todays date December 4th, I can now confirm that the Electric and Gas have been transferred from PAYG back to a meter, in time for our new tenants who move into the property in 2 days.
Thank you SSE for responding to my blog and tweets when the usual channels failed to respond.

 

update on vodafone

So yesterday I blogged about my troubles with Vodafone

http://chickenruby.blogspot.com/2011/09/its-shame-its-come-to-this.html

and someone on twitter sent my blog post to the CEO at Vodafone and I recieved an immediate response asking for my contact details, which I sent and at 4pm BST today I recieved a reply to tell me I can't transfer my contract to South Africa Vodacom as it's a seperate company.

I get that, I got that message in December when I rang Customer Services up and since then all I've asked for is for a reference for Vodacom to say I've been a reliable customer with Vodafone for 10 years, as I have no credit history here. In fact I get that message every bloody time I write, email, visit the store.

I've asked, begged and pleaded to get my online access sorted so I can ensure there are sufficient funds in my UK bank account to make payments, I've asked for all correspondence to be sent via email as the UK sim card is not active here and post can take up to 4 weeks to reach me.

I've also asked if they can let me know how I can go about getting my phone fixed, which has now died.

And last week I asked for an unlocking code for an old out of contract Blackberry so I have a phone to use with a Vodacom PAYG sim card.

So the beginning of September I lost my patience, I had a strop, I tweeted about how disgusted I was and finally 9 months later my online access is up and running.

But still the other questions go unanswered so I blogged and guess what? an unlocking code was recieved and I now have a phone I can use on PAYG.

I still don't have a reference and I still don't know why or even have an apology for why it took 9 months for my online account to be sorted.

As a gesture of good will Vodafone will cancel the contract with no further charge (runs out on December 24th and is only £20 ish per month)

I'm not feeling the good will.