[ceptimus]

I have a similar but smaller problem with my water utility bill. I always paid this by direct debit where the water company can take money from my bank account - and they set the amount they take it's not fixed.

You would think that this system would work fine (as it does for my credit cards and other stuff) but the water company are incompetent and/or greedy so they always used to use 'estimated bills' and other tricks to take more money than I actually owed them.

So I didn't even care about that - the electricity and gas companies do the same and my accounts with them are always providing them with free credit from me, but I figure it doesn't matter that much and I don't have to do anything to actually pay the bills - it's all automatic.

But about three years ago the water company got in touch with me and admitted that they'd allowed my account to get so far into credit that they would now stop all my payments for at least two years to allow it to get back to somewhere near zero before they took any more of my money - I said okay and forgot about it.

About six months ago they started sending me final demand letters threatening to cut off my water unless I paid them. Normally I get no correspondence from them at all (I can get a statement from the internet if I want one) so this was a shock. I got in touch with them and told them it was all their fault and all they needed to do was start taking money via direct debit again - I'd never asked them to stop in the first place. I also sent them a one-off cheque to cover what they were demanding while they got around to re-activating the direct debit. A few days ago I got another final demand and sent them another cheque. It appears that they're so incompetent that instead of putting the direct debits on hold they somehow cancelled their account with my bank completely.

Note that I never get just a bill, or even a 'demand' - it's nothing, nothing, nothing, ... Bam! Final demand:pay us now or you will soon be dying of thirst!!!1!

I now have to run around visiting my bank and spend time phoning these water company idiots so that I can set up a fresh direct debit.

How does the water company billing department manage to be so stupid? The only thing they do in their life is send out bills to customers and collect payments. You'd think that was so straightforward that it would be impossible to cock it up, but you'd be wrong.