Smudger Snippets
Created | Updated Apr 20, 2006
I suppose it's because I have so much time on my hands these days that all these memories come flooding back to me.
Belief
I honestly do believe that one day we are going to wake up to some good news. Let's face it, our luck is bound to change some time. We made the big mistake of falling for some sales pitch that this bloke gave us when he convinced us to change over our current gas and electricity some months ago. Luckily, or as we thought, we managed to use the cooling down period, cancelled the change over and, as we thought back then, that was it all solved. We continued to pay our gas and electric every month in the way we always have in the past - by paying at our local pay point at the corner shop.
Then one day we received a threatening letter from this other supplier that we thought we had cancelled earlier. This was the first contact we had ever had with them, and it threatened court action for the non payment of a thirty six pound gas bill.
Naturally we phoned them up to find out what was happening, but all we got was this really grumpy bloke who just kept repeating that if we did not pay they would take us to court. This is all he could say and, despite my many efforts to explain the situation to him, he just kept saying the same threats. By now my wife, who is seriously ill, was getting really upset and, I must admit, I did lose my temper with this bloke and hung up as soon as I had finished my expression of temper to him.
We contacted the company we had been paying for the past few weeks and they informed us that we were no longer with them and when I asked why they kept our money, they replied, 'Because you were sending it'. It transpired that we were, indeed, with this new company for gas but still with the old company for electric.
So after spending many hours on the phone listening to classical music, while waiting for them to answer our call, which they kept saying on their taped message was very important to them, we managed to sort it all out so that we were back with the old company for both supplies. Well that was what we thought as it later transpired that we were, in fact, paying both companies for the supply of gas and electric. When we again contacted them both, neither of them would admit that they owed us money so, once again, we spent many hours listening to their classical music while waiting for them to answer. All we got for our efforts was the old company eventually admitting that they owed us the grand sum of four pounds and twenty pence!
Meanwhile, while all this was going on, we also had to contend with the after-effects of someone throwing a brick through our window. This, in turn, meant dealing with the police and then the victims of crime unit, along with the insurance company as we had to claim. So we spent quite a lot of time on the phone and filling out forms. I must admit at this point, however, that of all the stress that all this caused, the insurance company were the easiest of them all to deal with. This came as a surprise to us as we just transferred our insurance over to them a couple of months earlier online using our home computer. The whole claim was dealt with on the phone and a couple of minutes on their web site.
This was a great relief to us as the last time we actually made a claim, which was over four years ago, the insurance company put us through hell just to settle a simple claim. So I suppose the fact that we changed over insurance companies was, indeed, the best thing we have done for ages. This brought us a ray of hope as regards to luck which, let's face it, we haven't had much of.
Then, just after we were getting back on our feet, the next bombshell came thundering through our letter box in the form of a letter demanding the sum of five hundred and fifty pounds. This all stems from the fact that our endowment was not going to cover our original loan and the company informed us of this by letter a few months back. I tried to make contact with the endowment company by phone and letter, but they kept ignoring my efforts. So I got in touch with one of those companies that advertise on television about getting compensation for you. Now the day their form arrived, was exactly the same day that the endowment company sent me their claim form, so we just filled in both of them as they seemed to be asking for the same information. However the only one to reply was the company that sold us the endowment in the first place, so we carried on dealing with them directly.
After a few weeks we were sent forms telling us that we had two options; one was to accept a one-off payment of compensation and carry on making the payments to the endowment until it matures, the other was to sell the policy back to them and use the money to make a payment towards the original loan and then re mortgage the remainder on a repayment-style mortgage. So we took the second option, sold them back the policy and arranged everything with the original lender through a new mortgage.
Then we got this demand for twenty five percent of the compensation from this other company. I phoned them up and tried to explain that we never received any compensation, but they were adamant that we still owed them over five hundred pounds.
I think the stress of all this hassle we have had over the past few months has taken its toll on my wife, who is still seriously ill and has, in fact, been in bed for the past fortnight. So I am still convinced that one day we are going to awaken to a day where we do, in fact, get some good news. That day could come at the end of June when the case of my back injury, which happened over seven years ago, eventually goes to court. The original accident left me disabled and unfit to work and I have been chasing up my case which, so far, has been handed over to no less than three different lawyers since it first started. I just wonder what my chances are of waking up one day to a little good news.
