You cannot imagine how pathetic the power supply companies are over here. In two years I must have spent literally hours and hours on the phone with them, sorting out stupid mistakes. That’s not just one company. That’s Scottish Gas and Scottish Power. We get both our gas and electricity from the one provider in an attempt to leverage our discounts. When we moved in, we transferred the apartment from Scottish Power (who the previous tenant used) to Scottish Gas based on nothing but cost. After 12 months we transferred back to Scottish Power because the headaches were just not worth the discount. Each transfer involves hours of telephone calls, hours of listening to crappy music and hours of frustration speaking to incompetent customer service agents.

Today I received a bill in the mail addressed to a Mr S McKechnie at our address, saying ‘Welcome to your new Scottish Power combined Gas & Electricity Account’. I called Michelle and asked if she had changed her name. Next, I called Scottish Power and after being on hold for close to 9 minutes, was greeted with “Good afternoon Ms Filles, I understand you have just moved, would you like to set up a new account?”.

And so the frustration starts again. For no apparent reason, Scottish Power, despite receiving money from us last Monday, have agreed to cancel our account and pretend someone else is living here. If it wasn’t for the fact that everything takes forever to sort out and the knowledge that eventually, regardless of when they work out their error, they’ll hunt us down to fix the problem, I probably should have just let Mr S McKechnie pay our bill until we move next year.

They should be thankful that I’ve caught the error early and they’ll get two accounts instead of one, but no, no thanks, no kindness, no fast efficient service. Just a whole load of questions and no answers…

It was a nice day. It was peaceful. It was. Thanks to Scottish Power I’m off to the pub for a bite of lunch and a pint. Michelle has a Christmas party this afternoon at the bowling lanes followed by a local Chinese dinner. Tomorrow nights Christmas do is a Wine & Cheese night on the south side – I know which one I’ve chosen to attend! Besides, telly is good on a Friday night – and I’m on Taggart tonight!