16 January - The Bulb blub continued
I was reluctant to impose
the Bulb tribulations
on readers yesterday, it’s not something that I would want to do often and in
the past such treatment has been meted out only to Sainsbury’s, Openreach, Newham Hospital and Scottish Power.
However the blog provoked a number of responses from Bulb customers who were
similarly dissatisfied and one from someone who felt relieved that his
application to join fell down a black hole. He has been waiting seven weeks for
a promised email. It would also appear that an email response which says
only that Bulb is too busy to answer emails is not unique to my friend.
However the blog also had the desired effect. In less time than it took for the
first response to the aborted Webchat, Bulb sent me a message. As it was not
really my complaint I gave them my friend’s contact details so that they could deal
with their customer directly, however Bulb did kindly
keep me in the loop. Unfortunately I didn’t think much of their supposed remedy.
To ‘fix’ the absence of an Economy 7 meter they changed my friend’s meter
reading log-in so that it led to a web page which no longer asked for an Economy 7
reading and they confirmed the cheap overnight tariff was no more. The dual rate tariff
had been withdrawn and the standard one imposed without consultation or
permission. I queried it and gained the impression that it was something Bulb had not thought about.
At present there is no resolution but having looked at the two tariffs I do
wonder why my friend is on Economy 7. I have therefore asked him to take meter
readings as he goes to bed and before breakfast so that we can get some idea of when he is using power
and defer a decision on reverting to the dual rate tariff. (On second thoughts, find some old bills!)
I have two addresses on my single Bulb account, mine and the one in East Ham,
the latter being Economy 7. I had better do some calculations on that too.