Origin Electricity

Origin

I thought I would mention our issues with moving as Australia has a quirk that is really quite irritating. It's their inability to get things done right - is that harsh?

When we moved into our place at Kangaroo Point, Cyp was told that he had to sign up with the electricity company. Really? Seemed odd to us as it was a furnished place and you think they would just somehow build the cost of electricity into the rental.

So he did - we got our first bill - a connection charge - it was made out to Cyp. He decided that it would be good if my name was also on the bill so I could have an identity in Australia (which I currently did not - I couldn't get a library card, mobile phone, drivers license or anything).

So Cyp called up Origin to ask if he could add my name. Sure - they said. They would make a note of it saying that he had authorized my name to be added. I would have to call to give authorization that I was allowing my name to be added.

Ok, we thought. So I called. They couldn't do it. They would need Cyp to call - "but he did" I said. "oh, he has to be on the call at the same time so we know it's him."

"but you knew it was him last time when he gave his authorization." My logic didn't seem to work with them so I had to wait till he got home to do this. This was at the point where even doing the littlest thing together was hard for us as there was always one kid in crisis when we were together.

We finally managed to get my name added. Not long after that we got a letter from Origin to the occupant of our unit saying that we needed to sign up for gas. Ok - I guess Origin gas and Origin electricity do not talk to each other. So Cyp called and signed up with Origin gas.

Shortly after that we got a bill from Origin gas - made out to a Mr. L C. How did they get that? Whatever. Cyp phoned Origin gas and asked them to change it.

We moved 2 months later. Just before moving we got an electricity bill from Origin - $350. For two months. Actually, no wait a minute - they charged us for three months. They basically took the account for the unit, charged us a fee for changing the name of the occupant and then charged us for an extra month that we were not even in the unit. So Cyp called and we got a bit of a credit. At the same time he told them we were moving - he was very clear. They had to come read the meter at our current place and read the meter at the next place and make sure that they got the next bill right.

Yes yes, they got it.

After we had been living in Toowong for a couple of weeks we got a letter from Origin gas - we had been charged a bit too much so they were going to send us a cheque. What? Why not just give us a credit on our bill? Whatever. They requested that we confirm the details of where the cheque was going before they sent it to us. The details they had still showed Mr. L C. So, I filled out a change of details request and sent it back to them. A couple of weeks later we got a cheque made out to L C.

Ok - this would be kinda hard for us to deposit as we deal with an online bank and I make deposits at the post office using my drivers license and deposit slips that show that the names on our account are clearly not L C. Cyp still has an account with a credit union here that he had to get set up initially to get his pay so he figured he might be able to deposit it there as they know him.

This past week I got the bill from Origin electricity. $350 for three months. (they bill on a quarterly period here). By this point I had forgotten about our credit. As I was going to pay the bill I remembered. Where was our credit? I emailed Cyp. He phoned Origin electricity. I told him that the account number on our new bill was not the same as our old bill.

So...turns out that they had not stopped billing us for our old place. They couldn't get in to read the meter on the day we moved out so they didn't bother. WHAT?

Cyp emailed me back to tell me to contact our old landlady to ask her to get the new tenants to sign up with Origin. I was about to do it and then thought - is this really our job? No. We told them we were leaving and the date. At this point I was fuming and just about ready to go ballistic. I emailed back Cyp.

You phone them back and tell them that they can kiss their electricity charges from the date we moved goodbye and they better not charge us a disconnection fee. We had clearly told them we were moving - obviously as they clearly had the start date on our new account. Oh yah - and they better transfer that credit to our new account.

I have notes from Cyp's conversation that he emailed me. It clearly did not go well but he got agreement.

This all happened a couple of days before it turns out that two of our rent cheques have gone missing and no one bothered to tell me - the property manager or the bank. yah, there is something different about Australia.

As a final note - Cyp finally deposited the cheque to Mr. L C at the credit union. In fact, they did not seem surprised at all. They said " if you try to get it made out in a different name, it will take a year - just give it to us."

Did I mention our woes with Telstra the phone company? I will have to save that for another day.

Thankfully on the day this all went down, Gaby had sent us a care package from Boston. It had cheerios. You don't know how happy this made me.