Unexpected party

Bloke called me last night. Distracted me. He told me that, as he was sure I was aware, interest rates were rising.

"And?" I said.

He told me that his company look at what I'm paying and work out how I can get a better deal.

"I'm not interested," I replied.

He asked me whether there was anything preventing me. I think he meant preventing me from moving, he wasn't explicit.

"Yeah," I said. "I'm watching telly," and put the phone down.

I've never once bought anything from these cold-calling people. I don't want a new kitchen, or new windows, or a new mortgage, or a new electricity supplier. You'd think they'd just get the message. *

Although, whilst I'm on the subject of electricity suppliers...

9 months after I moved in, I finally got Powergen to accept that my meter was faulty, that all of their bills so far this year were bollox, and they installed a new one. A month ago.

So I rang them yesterday to ask them why I still haven't seen a bill or a communication from them to the effect that I'm on a new meter.

"You've got £300 outstanding on your bill," the man said.

So I patiently explained the situation again, that they were ignoring the lack of movement showed by the meter, that they were plucking £150 pound estimates out of the air every quarter, that I'd had a new meter installed and that the nice lady I spoke to the last time told me the debt would get written off.

"Can you give me a meter reading?" he says.

"No. I can't give you a meter reading because the cupboard its stored in has a rusty lock and every time you send me a crappy plastic key it breaks. Surely, as you've just installed the meter, you can guess that the meter reading would be somewhere around zero."

"Hold on," he says, and puts me on hold, before coming back and telling me that I can get a new key from a 'Pay shop', which apparently translates as a post office.

But I don't want a key, I don't want to read the meter, I just want them to acknowledge that I'm on a new meter and that the old (made-up) debt is gone.

I figured it wasn't a good time to ask him about the renewable-energy leaflet that had fallen through my letterbox the day before.

(* - yes, I am registered with the telephone preference people, but it takes a month to kick in and I only got around to it last week)