Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Me vs the water company

Sorea is the water provider in Sant Cugat. We never really thought much about them, until we got a panicked phone call from the company that manages the place we rent.

“Have you paid your water bill recently?”

“I don’t know. We gave you our bank account number, should be automatic, right?”

“Sorea made a mistake when they set up your new neighbor's water account last year. Your neighbor’s bank account has been paying for your water, and since no one paid the neighbor’s account, they cut off the neighbor’s water.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“Can you give your neighbor 1100 euros for the money they paid into your account?”

“What?!”

“Sorea won’t restore the neighbor’s water until the account is paid for, and she doesn’t have the money to pay her bill twice.”

“But Sorea made a mistake, shouldn’t they fix it?”

“They said their computer system doesn’t let them transfer payments between accounts.”

“Look, this is stupid. If I give my neighbor (who we dislike quite a bit since their dogs crap all over the place) 1100 euros, what guarantee do I have that they will pay their bill with the money? It’s not like they will give me a receipt. How about Sorea refunds the neighbor, and then we both pay our respective bills?"

“Sorea isn’t going to like this. You should have been checking to make sure that you were paying your bill.”

“But they never sent me a bill, they sent my bill to the neighbors! As far as I’m concerned it’s not my problem. Sorea has my bank account details and can charge me what I owe. I’m not going to waste my time trying to fix a problem that Sorea is perfectly capable of fixing on their own.”

We will see how showdown ends...

5 comments:

Toni said...

WOW, 1100 euros in just over one year??? Under the EU Water Framework Directive, water bills will go up by a considerable amount over the next few years...Embrace yourself and pray for God!

santcugat said...

How's God going to help?

Toni said...

Well, from a convinced atheist, I guess God won't do much, either way!

Ian said...

sounds dreadful!! we have a well which seems to be drying up at the moment (in Peratallada) and so have asked for a quote from SOREA to get on the mains - 6,ooo euros but then our property manager has implied it is going to cost about that a year for the water!! would be cheaper to buy Evian and sprinkle it on the grass I think...surely this must be wrong? How could anyone possible survive that type of pricing for water??

santcugat said...

Sounds like you need to dig yourself an illegal well :)