… I wrote a letter. Yes that’ll show ’em. ’em being eON the purveyor of not enough electricity and excuses. We survived last winter on convection heaters and wearing eight layers of clothing. All the time soothed by various identikit representatives from eON that, as the fiasco was entirely their fault and they’d cocked up fixing it not once, not twice but THREE times, they would pay for the eye watering costs of running five 3kw carbon unfriendly heaters.

A year on, and nothing has happened. Well I say nothing, from our end we’ve been polite, considerate and diffident asking for the occasional update on when we might be repaid. The latest email from the jobsworth from engineering this morning denied all knowledge of any agreement, and wondered if he could fob us off with a different department. Attractive as that solution was, instead I went for the nuclear option creating this email and copying it to the head of public relations and the managing director.

I don’t expect they’ll ever pay, but hey I feel better.

”

Dear smartypants,

Your recent email is nothing more than another wasted effort to resolve this problem. eON have shown a total lack of ownership, clarity and urgency to resolve a problem ENTIRELY of their own making. eON further have clear and documented liability in failing to provide us with sufficient power to run our heating system.

The convection heaters were a tactical solution to keep our young family warm during the winter. As parents, the health and well being of our children is of course our primary concern. Whereas eON’s primary concern should be the rather more simple supply of electricity. It really shouldn’t be that difficult, nor should it have dragged on FOR ANOTHER YEAR in which eON have failed to deliver on their promises, comedically failed to sort out our account and attempted to wheedle out of their responsibilities. All this time we’ve been paying for electricity eON had promised to reimburse is for.

You clearly are not interested in us as a customer. You have many others, and I am sure we are nothing more than a difficult issue that you don’t want to deal with. From our perspective however, we are powerless in our attempts to seek closure to a very upsetting and financially crippling set of circumstances that ARE ENTIRELY YOUR FAULT. We are staggered that you offer nothing but lame excuses, and even those have to be dragged out after weeks of silence. Did anyone ever make clear to eON that their customers are kind of an important tenet of their business model?

So here’s some news. We’re not going away. We’re not going to be fobbed off, beaten down by your apathy and excuses, re-directed to someone else who will waste our time. We’ve made our case patiently and politely and you’ve responded cravenly and inconsistently. It is pointless to try and convince you of the justness of our case, although any outside review body would clearly see it as absolutely watertight. Therefore three options present:

1) Pay us the money you promised. Within thirty days.

2) Provide us with someone in your organisation who has authority to resolve this. That person clearly isn’t you. Failing that, we’ll start with the MD.

3) Do nothing (I’m guessing from the history of this fiasco this will be your default position) in which case we’ll opt for OfGen and the local press who I’m sure will be delighted to cover a human interest story where “ as usual “ faceless corporations ride roughshod over poor consumers.

You may take from the e-mail that we are angry and frustrated. And you may feel insulted by the tone. Please understand we really didn’t want to go for the Nuclear option, but you’ve left us with no option. eON have “ for over a year “ failed on their obligations to serve us as a customer. And the only people suffering in this time are us. So we have every right to be irritated with both you and your firm.

Please advise us of your response.

”

Do I sound angry? I hope so, I certainly felt fairly vexed while I was writing it.