Electricity Theft

Yesterday I caught one of the Blackett Homes contractor stealing electricity from one of the power points outside my house. They are building next to my house and they should actually have to have electricity connected to their site for the work that they are doing. I have sent them this fax:

An incident of electricity theft and trespass has occurred today at my property at 5 Toraman street, Somewhere in the morning at around 7:30. Another incident also reported by my wife happened on Monday 30th of June, for half a day a power cable was running from my house to the building site of yours.

In both incidents the electricity has been used without my permission and this is an ongoing violation. I do not want this to happen in the future; otherwise it will be reported to the authorities. Given that the contractors were using a lot of power tools which require large amounts of electricity; I therefore request that Blackett Homes compensate me for the inevitable increase in my electricity bill.

This is apparently happening to a lot of people. I think, I should disable those plugs.

So be carefull if any construction job is going on next to your house. They may be using your water or electricity without your permission.

Incompetent Companies

AAPT is an internet service provider in Australia. I did have an account with them but hey failed to transfer my account to my new house. Because of a mistake that an AAPT service desk officer did, my contact number has been recorded incorrrectly as the number that is to be disconnected. So my first request for relocation has been rejected. After this a new relocation request has been lodged by me. I said to the lady what the mistake was and tried to prevent re-occuring. Second one is also rejected because of the same mistake and I have been left without a phone at my new place. After a lot of fight on the phone and much hassle with their new CRM system which is changed in the beginning of 2008, I have cancelled all my accounts with them at 10th of January.

After a month I received a bill from them showing that I need to pay some more. They were actually owing to me not the other way around. I called them immediately and explained the situation and fixed the problem. Cancelled my account again and I asked to the lady if I am going to receive SMS notifications about my bill. She said there is 5.72$ credit on my account and that is why I am receiving those SMS notifications. I said send me that with a cheque and cancel my account completely. She said she has done. I received a cheque of 5.72$ and thought everything was okay.

Now it is July. I am still receiving SMS and e-mail notifications every month about my 5.72$ credit and still can login into my account. I lodged a request through their account management system. Let’s see what happens.

The funny thing is, everytime I talk with the customer service, they are saying that they have done the requested job but it turns out to be that every single time they’ve failed. I strongly think that they need some more training about the system they use.