We are getting really close to demolishing the old house now and as a result this week my task was to get the electricity and gas lines/meters abolished. A seemingly simple task, it took all Monday, most of Tuesday and all of my resolve to get these items organised.
Electricity was really simple, I rang United Energy, the distributor who told me to call AGL who were the retailer the previous owner used as the electricity was still connected. The lovely guy at AGL opened a non-supply account for me, emailed me the form and I had the whole thing organised in about 10 minutes. Sweet.
Gas was a whole other story. Now, I like the odd glass of wine but usually I don’t indulge until the kids are in bed. Monday and my dealing with Origin Energy had me hankering for a crisp glass of Sauv Blanc at about 3pm to try and get me through the rest of the day.
It seems that on the general Origin energy phone number, no-one knows how to get gas disconnected. I was on hold for 50 minutes, transferred to 4 different people and when they finally answered I got disconnected and had to start again… that was just Monday morning.
Not willing to waste more time on hold, I twittered about my ordeal and tagged Origin on twitter. Almost instantaneously I heard from Claire, their social manager and she had my details passed onto my own private customer service officer who would do all the waiting on hold for me trying to sort this out. Redeemed! Or so I thought. After being transferred a few more times, the guy at National response centre told me I needed the previous owners final meter reading to get the abolishment and subsequent employees told me I needed to create and account, get gas connected, disconnected and then abolished. What the? I threw the towel in at that point on Monday afternoon. 10 Origin employees, over 2 hours on hold, 1 message on twitter and still no idea how to get rid of the gas.
Tuesday was a different story. A new call to the National response Centre had me connected straight away with Rylie who was fantastic. She emailed me the form whilst I was on the phone. Told me all I needed was a copy of something with my name as the owner, the meter number and a completed application form. I sent this in on Tuesday night and by wed morning the job was raised and the gas will be taken out ASAP at no cost!!! I can’t believe how easy it was. Apart from Rylie, Origin Energy really need to get their act together and certainly won’t be in the running to supply our new house with anything once it is built!
