Guess-estimated electricity and water bills, WHY? by www.maltalive.tv

Guess-estimated electricity and water bills, WHY?

Why, I ask myself do we get through the letter box estimated bills? (From now on I will refer to “estimated bills” as “guess-estimated bills” as it seems to make more sense to me

and you hopefully by the end of this short article, or rant!) And maybe once or twice a year we will be fortunate enough to get an “actual” bill, maybe we have to thank the mathematician/accountant that appears once or twice a year to give an actual bill payment!



But why in a modern world do we not always get an actual bill? Is it because someone is making money from all our guess-estimated bill payments, which I will do my best to try, or shall I say “guess,” to make sense of it all shortly!



Firstly I will say that I have recently moved back to Malta, where I have lived on and off all my life, but have been living in England for the past 4/5 years, I cannot remember the exact time I lived there, that was just a guess-estimate!



So, here I am back in Malta and I have recently rented a beautiful traditional apartment in a separate part of a town house in Sliema, fortunately for me the owners only use their part of the house occasionally throughout the year, and a very nice couple they are, I must say. As we were going through the rental agreement they explained to me about the bill payment, basically we agreed that I would pay them a certain amount each month towards the bills; I’ll call it a guess-estimated arrangement, of which I was happy to agree to as they are given guess-estimated bills themselves, so no choice really! They showed me a recent guess-estimated bill so as to give me an idea of how much it would be, when I saw the guess-estimated bill I laughed out loud, they looked at me in surprise and wondered what I laughed at, to which I explained that I had seen my father’s recent guess-estimated bill which had the exact same guess-estimated amount, to which they replied why is it funny, I explained that my father lived in a similar size property to mine, and this is a guess-estimated bill for a town house! How can that be………………..?



If Albert Einstein was still alive I believe he may have difficulty in explaining this dilemma! God rest his soul!



Whilst I lived in the UK I refused to pay guess-estimated bills, I would inform them that I wanted an “actual” bill due to the fact that I was moving shortly, they would say in reply; that we will pay you the money back at the end of the year if the guess-estimate is over (hardly going to be under is it!), I would then reply, “do you know where I will be at the end of the year, because I don’t!?” Some people reading this may think I am an awkward customer, I would say that I am just a customer!



Now I will tell you a brief scenario involving a family member in the UK and about her guess-estimated bill! At the end of the year she was given £300 back from the electricity company due to her guess-estimating billing; To which I replied, “wow that’s “generous” of them”, I then said, “ look at it this way, I am sorry to shatter your dreams but, now think that the said corporate/state company held 30 million (half the population of the UK) times £300 of each customer and had it placed in their extremely large and very heavy corporate bank accounts for one year! Now imagine the interest they will gain from such a “manipulative” manoeuvre! I am not going to go into the interest rate figures; I’ll leave that for you to work out and ponder on!



Also I will let the reader work out the interest gained by local companies in Malta who give out the same guess-estimated bills! (I am neither a mathematician nor an accountant!) But what I will add is a brief part of an article which I read in The Sunday Times of Malta 26-06-2011; Electricity bills may rise by 20 to 30per cent next year if the state-owned energy company (Enemalta) buys its oil requirements at current future prices, according to the Finance Minister………..



So, I guess-estimate that our guess-estimated bills we bill even more guess-estimated in the coming year! I better stop now as I have a guess-estimated flight departure to catch!

written by david@maltalive.tv
http://www.maltalive.tv