Bill me

Somewhere out there, some companies have put together a list. On this list is the name of every person that those companies feel can be over-charged on their bills, without anybody noticing. Somehow, my name seems to have ended up on that list.

First there was Lumos, a power and gas company, who keep trying to charge me for power and gas. Two problems. Firstly, they aren't my provider, I go through a different company, which I have told them several times over. They still keep sending me bills. But the biggest reason why I know I don't owe them any money, apart from the fact that my name isn't on the actual bill? It's because at least some of the charges go back before I'd even signed the lease on my flat.

Then the phone company tried it on, adding a ridiculous amount to a bill, but deleting it as soon as I queried it, telling me that if I hadn't been informed about the charge when I signed up, then I didn't have to pay it. The ease with which I got them to take it off makes me think it's a "hit-'em-up-and-hope-they-pay-it" kind of charge. Well, nobody gets one over on this little black duck, let me tell you. Especially not to the tune of $80 a month. It all adds up.

This month, it was City Link who had a crack. I use the toll roads they administer for work, on the rare occasions that I have to head into head office, and even more rarely when I'm heading into town for a night out. It doesn't happen often. So getting a $140 bill for a month came as something of a surprise, especially given that the last month had been a zero balance. I shouldn't have been totally surprised. I'd had a warning shot fired over my bow last week, when they sent me a text saying that my account was being suspended. I couldn't work out why, but didn't get around to finding out why, because I wasn't planning on using it in the near future. But now I want to use it, and I can't. The strangest part is that nobody can actually tell me why my account has been suspended. All the bills that have been issued before have been paid. This one is in dispute, and only arrived in the mail today. The kicker, though, is that the account was suspended 2 days before the statement was even issued.

I have to say, I hate that the roads are tolled in the first place. The most commonly used stretch for me is a road that was built when my mother was still at school. I begrudge having to pay to use it. Before I moved away, I refused point blank to drive on it, out of principle. Notice, time in London has eroded my principles in favour of ease of use. Because it does make my life a whole lot easier, halving my travel time to and from head office. But if the price of convenience is a 25 minute phone call with someone who couldn't actually resolve my query, and could barely enter my problem into the system because there wasn't an automated option, then I'll go back to taking my time to get places. And if they argue that it was my car, I can call in character witnesses to help defend me, because anyone who knows me at all would agree, there's no way in hell that I was passing under one of the City Link gantries at 06:50.

So I'm issuing a warning. I've had enough. Any company that thinks it's OK to over charge me, or add false charges to my bills, don't say you weren't warned. Just ask Virgin in the UK. I am capable of prolonged phone calls where I am able to maintain anger and coherence, all at the same time. It might have taken me a while to get Virgin to do what they were supposed to, but I know how to do it now. And I don't have the cash to throw away on the whims of some accounts department screw up. If you see my name on that list, cross it out. Because one way or another, I'm not paying and you'll regret sending me a bill for something that I didn't use.