Spent a good chunk of the afternoon yesterday on the phone to First Utility, who for the last three years supply me with electricity, gas and inflated estimate bills that they send to me in duplicate as they have me with two different customer account numbers. To try and make that simpler, they have issued a third account number and decided that I have never paid electricity or gas and I therefore owe them 2.393 pounds and pence. I'm getting final notices of payment on that last, third account number, mentioning legal department, etc. Yesterday I phoned them for the third time -the two previous calls had fallen through exactly twenty minutes into them, after being put on hold while the person at the other end 'was sorting things out'. This is on an 0845 number. Every time you speak to someone different so you have to go over the same story again. They have 'smart' meters that don't work and I have been sending them emails with the readings (including photographs of the meters..). Long history of email and phone correspondence which goes from the surreal to the Kafkian.

Haven't moved away as there is that ghost second (third?!) account that would still be hanging over my head, as is happening to a neighbour in the building right now (First Utility was already set up as the provider in this new build). I'm also finding that they have the very worst reviews of all gas/electricity providers..

I put a small personal recommendation on Twitter ('never ever consider using these people as gas/leccy providers') and they came back to me asking whether they could help. Can they?

Sorry about the lengthy post!

Tags: house, the modern age, the service industry, the smirk of the gods