The original bill came out in March and specified the monthly amount for the forthcoming year. This new bill showed an increase of around £60 per month with no apparent explanation for the increase.
Join our new WhatsApp channel: The Morning Round-Up
Get the biggest pub trade stories straight to your phone. Listen to our one-minute daily news briefing and receive breaking news, exclusives and sector updates throughout the day. Remember to turn notifications on in the top right corner!
I rang the council to query the bill and, after 30 minutes in a call queue, I finally spoke to a person. The lady on the phone was helpful but couldn’t see why we’d had an amended bill sent out. She promised to get someone to ring me back.
The weekend passed as did Monday and by Tuesday with still no call back, and I was becoming increasingly twitchy. I decided to try again… the recorded voice advised the wait time for answer was approximately 35 minutes.
I hung up.
There was much debate over why the bill might have increased. Perhaps it’s a cunning plan to fund next year’s recently announced decrease? Or wait… maybe we’ve been mistakenly re-categorised as a vape shop!
We were on the verge of just paying the bill – time is always against the small business owner – I’d already spent too much time on this.
But something snapped… NO! I WANT ANSWERS.
Later, on the Tuesday afternoon, I decided to try again, I mean surely nobody will be ringing the council just before closing time.
Demanding answers
I got through immediately and explained that I’d been promised a call back but nobody had rang.
The call handler was patient but informed me I should have been told that the council had not moved on to July queries yet, but she would take a look at the bill and see what was going on.
I understand that telling someone to expect a call back in a couple of weeks might not be the easiest of conversations, especially when there’s people like me getting on the blower demanding answers.
Can you imagine how soul destroying it must be when you’re not yet onto July queries and its only three days until August?
This new person couldn’t work out what the increase was either and I was promised a call back the next morning after she had taken a thorough look at our bill to see what was going on.
The following morning, she did indeed ring back. It transpires there had been a necessary update to their systems that had resulted in a swathe of bills being erroneously sent out.
It was a mistake and our monthly bill would remain the same.
Politely ask to pay
Later that day, I went to pick up some take-out containers. I’ve never known so many people ask for doggy bags, maybe it’s the cost-of-living crisis. There was no one manning (am I still allowed to use that word?) the checkout, but there was a bell on the counter with a sign that stated ‘Ring ONCE for service’. Noticing a staff member stacking shelves nearby, I thought I’d just go over and politely ask to pay, rather than ringing the bell, it just felt a bit rude. I mean a knock on the bar for service always gets you served last…
“You’re supposed to ring the bell on the counter”. Ah OK, this person is obviously not working on the till.
I rang the bell once.
The person stacking the shelves calmly got up and came over to serve me (*Please insert an emoji of your own choice at this point).
I can’t wait for next March (assuming we’re still here by then) when the reduction in rates will equate to a monthly saving of approximately £200.
That’s £50… or less than the price of two pints of session beer per day.
Not that I’m ungrateful, at least it’ll cover the cost of the take-out containers.
Every little helps eh?
