Her story – as opposed to his story or history.

I’ve been promising/threatening to give Lorraine the opportunity to tell some of her exploits over the last six months or so.

So here we are…

The water company.

As we are in Spain it may not be surprising to learn that we don’t have the account references for any of the utilities in the UK!

I phoned the water company to notify them that we were out of the UK property in late-April, the date of completion.

The nice young lad I was talking to said that they were going to have to read the meter.

Not altogether surprising you might think but we’ve had estimated bills for all the nearly 20 years we’ve been there and just paid each month by direct debit what they’ve asked for.

A nice middle aged man had appeared outside our property in 2020 and attempted to try to find the meter with various tools and appliances without success.

Even digging around and under the hedges on to the lane.

First cooking at an Andalusian chiringuito Image by guillermo gavilla from Pixabay

Mainly because the plan they had of its location sort of matched where the telephone company had their hole in the ground.

So I asked if the invoice could be emailed as we were not in the UK and did not have a UK forwarding address.

Two weeks later I was emailed an amount payable and told to log in to my account which we didn’t have.

The next phone call was to another nice young man (nice young man #2) to ask how we could owe several hundred pounds over and above the amounts taken by direct debit.

To be told that was ‘just for the period’ and overall they owed us a couple of £s.

I informed him that the property had been completely empty for four months. And only occupied by one person for several months before that. So I was rather hoping the bill would be somewhat LESS than that.

Her story continues

Once establishing that they had to have a meter reading to produce a final bill, even though we do not have a meter, he said he would ‘look into it’.

The outcome of this was to receive a replacement invoice for 60p MORE than the previous one.

Which led to me talking to yet another nice young man (nice young man #3)…

Who could not do anything initially as he needed a meter reading (see above) to issue a revised bill.

He did however go away and spoke with his supervisor, came back and said ‘leave it with me’.

A week or so later we get a third bill for around 2/3rd of the previous one and a refund direct from the company.

May not be exactly what we wanted but it’ll do.

Honestly.

Electricity. Her story continues.

Phoned a couple of days before completion to be told to phone back on the day, despite there being no one at the property.

Phoned on the day, gave them the same reading as I’d tried to give earlier and asked for the bill to be emailed. Same reason as water, above.

Around a fortnight later, I received – by email – an estimated final bill.

As they knew to email they could only have got that from the earlier conversation detailing the final meter reading.

When phoning them they stated they had never received the ORIGINAL call, despite what I’ve just said above.

But at least they then got it right which reduced the bill by 70%.

Business phone. Her story.

Colin had already transferred the business phone system to a VoIP set up in January so this ought to have been straightforward…

I was expecting a credit for the January invoice. But in fact received an additional invoice taking the equipment rental forward to July.

After they would not initially speak to me because of lack of passwords, mother’s maiden names and the rest of the palaver I finally got to talk to someone.

And was told the VoIP transfer should have automatically closed the account.

Eventually she went away and checked her system to be told ‘oh, no it hasn’t, but it should have been’.

When asked to email the final credit note I was told they couldn’t do that. I would have to open an account online.

She ran through how to open it and an hour later I was the proud owner of an online account which existed solely to tell me when the credit had been raised.

They still took the direct debit for the April invoice despite it being wrong.

Just as I was getting ready to give them yet another call, the credit did appear on the account and we finally got the money back.

Home phone.

The process itself was mainly straightforward but Colin’s PA was intrigued to receive a box via the postal redirect asking for their router back.

Which we presume is somewhere in one of the three containers we are using for storage in the UK. So might have been a touch difficult to put my hands on.

Colin’s PA said she had come across this before and that – after maybe a reminder – it would be forgotten about.

Which, touch wood, it has been.

Moving money between bank accounts.

This is UK to UK, not UK to Spain.

Because the monies in the main UK bank account are well in excess of the guaranteed amount in the event of a bank failure, I moved a five figure sum to a savings account with a building society.

A building society that we pay a standing order to monthly and have had for MANY years.

Because it is a standing order, it wasn’t set up in our payments list online.

So I set it up and sent £50 to make sure I’d entered the details correctly.

Which went through without a problem.

Her story continued.

So then I sent (or tried to send) the five figure sum less £50 to complete the transaction.

Within five minutes I received a text saying the bank’s fraud team would be giving me a call.

She duly phoned and I had to go through security. Despite THEM having called ME on the phone number recorded on THEIR system.

Then we went through a different form of security. They wanted to know my car registration which I informed her I had sold five months previously.

Having been asked some more questions I was told I had failed security. I would have to go into a branch.

I just managed to stop her putting the phone down in time to explain that we are both in Spain. Which might make visiting a branch a little complicated.

At this point I went and found Colin before I lost my temper.

She did not seem to be aware that standing orders were not in your payments list. So failed to understand why I needed to set it up in the first place.

Eventually, after covering the collective bank’s arses (not in the spellchecker because it’s American) in the event of a fraud, we were told that if anything was wrong with the payment we would not be able to recover it.

But after confirming the details were the same as the standing order the payment was allowed to complete.

Lo and behold, five minutes later, the money was in the building society account.

After a phone call that had taken over an hour. Her story.

It was actually easier to transfer the monies for the Spanish house purchase! But at least this one didn’t vanish for 48 hours…

His nibs can have the reins back next week.

We’re off to Sevilla for a long weekend with the daughter. So expect some details about that.