A FEW days ago I received by white van special delivery a bouquet of exotic seasonal flowers.
Heart a-flutter, I checked the wee card which came with the bountiful blooms. No, not a late Valentine Day gift from a secret admirer (at almost 80, I can but wish). But bizarrely a peace offering from ScottishPower to compensate for the major problems, still unresolved, with which my husband and I have been battling during the past year.
By post the same day came a bill from ScottishPower for £5875.56 addressed to me: no, we are not benevolently financing everyone’s electricity supply in our village, or maintaining a contraband cannabis plant in the spare room en suite. Similar bills come in on a regular basis and are related to an electricity meter we do not even have. Scottish Power admits its mistake, but seems powerless (no pun intended) to resolve the situation
“Ignore the bills,” says a member of Scottish Power’s Directors Support Team airily on the phone to my husband. “They are now on the system so we can’t stop them. We know they are wrong…”
After months of both my husband and myself writing letters and emails, and endless telephone calls – as well as tearing our hair out in sheer frustration – the menacing bills still keep coming. I will soon be on every credit blacklist in the country. What good will a bunch of flowers be then? Or if my bank account is frozen, and my worldly goods seized? There might even be an extant debtors’ jail lurking in a far-flung corner where I will be thrown…
I normally write a polite and gracious thank you letter to anyone who sends me a gift… But my moral dilemma: do I thank Scottish Power for the flowers? Or return them? Perhaps with an arbitrary handling bill: a large one.
Joan Matthewson.
Sunnyside, Glenmidge, Dumfries.
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