To avoid looking like utter bastards when dishing out treatment to pensioners, energy suppliers partake of a scheme to assist those in need of a discount come winter. I'd give you my cynical view of that, but frankly I haven't the time. Discounts are welcome.
Flashback. I handled the energy contracts, and was informed that a warm home discount scheme had arrived. Applying was easy. I applied, and everything went through okay.
This post isn't about the easiness of securing a discount. It's about what happened this time.
As leaves barely start to turn autumnal, the electronic process unfurls...
Around this time of year, I fill out the details electronically and I'm told that my mother qualifies for the bonus. Easy.
There are a few catches. Participating energy suppliers only, of course. There's a list. It grows, annually. No one wants to be the bastard energy supplier leaving elderly people in the icy wastes to die. What else?
Let's reach for the fiddly calculation. Does the household spend more than 10% of income on fuel bills?
Is the annual income below a certain threshold?
And so on.
The important question is about people who are most at-risk. Does she suffer from some form of mental incapacity?
Yes. And there was no problem gaining the discount in the past.
This time, the instant reply popped up. You don't qualify.
What the actual fuck?
I checked all the qualifiers again. And I applied again, just to be sure I hadn't screwed up. Same result. I went through the routine again, taking extra care. Mustn't mess up by ticking the wrong electronic box.
No good.
Well, fuck, I'll just have to write them a letter.
I checked all the details again, and went into the relevant figures, options, categories, and all the ones that weren't relevant to this case - just in case.
And I fired off that letter.
Let's talk about bodily-functions.
From time to time, and you may have noticed this, the human body informs you that you need to dump a message down the toilet bowl.
Well, this isn't the movies. In the movies, a character will take an important phone call during an important scene. The call may relate directly to that scene. Movies are funny that way.
My phone is belted to my hip, so that I can handle an emergency at almost any time.
(The exception is during a fire. Leave the building first before making a call, unless you are trapped in the building. Leave first, and live to call later.)
Kinglily, I rise from the throne and flush a trouble away. The phone goes. It blares operatically, as I've chosen a piece of music that will wake the dead. No feeble ringtone here.
I don't know the number, but I take the Batcall anyway. Someone wants to speak to my mother. That must be official business. Who is calling?
It's the guy from the Warm Home Discount Scheme. Instantly, I realise these sorts of calls are often recorded for "training purposes" (legal arse-covering reasons), and I do my utmost to relocate from the vast echo-chamber of the bathroom.
The flush was done, and now we are in the realms of the after-flush, with water dripping and gurgling in the background. Anyone listening to a recorded version will wonder what dank cave I'm in.
It's the Batcave.
Though I'm not sure if I'm the Batman or Alfred the Butler, at this point.
I relocate to the nearest room. Shit, fuck, bugger. Music is playing on the computer, and the off-switch for that function is buried under a sea of software applications.
Bugger, fuck, shit. I re-relocate to the other side of the landing and dive into a noiseless room.
We go through the formalities. I'm listed on the account, and so I can speak on my mother's behalf. We run over the checklist. Now the high card there is always going to be the unspecified mental health problem that you bring up but never quite mention in detail if you are asked to tick off a few boxes.
I have to do a bit of detail there on the phone, and this is all done without documentation. My original letter was done without documentation for a reason...
The officials don't want documentation unless they specifically ask for it. But things are different on the phone. I say the word dementia and I am given the sympathies of the guy on the other end of the line.
He then wants to confirm if I am the daughter. Obviously, as I am a guy, there's a momentary silence and then we both laugh. He had a note down that the daughter made the request in the letter.
Note to self. Must remember not to write official correspondence in pink lipstick and glitter pens.
That glitch out of the way, he covers news of the other glitch - the one that is kicking people's claims out of the system. The news is instant and the news is good. With dementia, my mother definitely qualifies for the discount.
The guy goes further than that, and adds my mother to an at-risk register...if there's a problem with the gas or electricity, our call becomes a priority call. We can come off that register at any time, though there's no reason to remove her from there.
Soon enough, we part company on the phone. Was there anything else the guy could help with? No. He covered it all, with fairness and transparency...and a temporary sex-change thrown in for nothing. What's a dutiful daughter to complain about?
There might be a letter requesting supporting documentation, but that's a random sampling and we shouldn't worry if we receive one. I'll have the supporting documentation ready to print, if it happens.
And that's the saga of the Warm Home Discount not being available for a very short while. The cash is a discount off electricity or gas bills. And if you know anything about dementia, you'll know that you are paying for lights that were left on. So the discount is damn handy.
I'm still a guy, if anyone thinks to check. There. Saved you the bother.
Let's talk about bodily-functions.
From time to time, and you may have noticed this, the human body informs you that you need to dump a message down the toilet bowl.
Well, this isn't the movies. In the movies, a character will take an important phone call during an important scene. The call may relate directly to that scene. Movies are funny that way.
My phone is belted to my hip, so that I can handle an emergency at almost any time.
(The exception is during a fire. Leave the building first before making a call, unless you are trapped in the building. Leave first, and live to call later.)
Kinglily, I rise from the throne and flush a trouble away. The phone goes. It blares operatically, as I've chosen a piece of music that will wake the dead. No feeble ringtone here.
I don't know the number, but I take the Batcall anyway. Someone wants to speak to my mother. That must be official business. Who is calling?
It's the guy from the Warm Home Discount Scheme. Instantly, I realise these sorts of calls are often recorded for "training purposes" (legal arse-covering reasons), and I do my utmost to relocate from the vast echo-chamber of the bathroom.
The flush was done, and now we are in the realms of the after-flush, with water dripping and gurgling in the background. Anyone listening to a recorded version will wonder what dank cave I'm in.
It's the Batcave.
Though I'm not sure if I'm the Batman or Alfred the Butler, at this point.
I relocate to the nearest room. Shit, fuck, bugger. Music is playing on the computer, and the off-switch for that function is buried under a sea of software applications.
Bugger, fuck, shit. I re-relocate to the other side of the landing and dive into a noiseless room.
We go through the formalities. I'm listed on the account, and so I can speak on my mother's behalf. We run over the checklist. Now the high card there is always going to be the unspecified mental health problem that you bring up but never quite mention in detail if you are asked to tick off a few boxes.
I have to do a bit of detail there on the phone, and this is all done without documentation. My original letter was done without documentation for a reason...
The officials don't want documentation unless they specifically ask for it. But things are different on the phone. I say the word dementia and I am given the sympathies of the guy on the other end of the line.
He then wants to confirm if I am the daughter. Obviously, as I am a guy, there's a momentary silence and then we both laugh. He had a note down that the daughter made the request in the letter.
Note to self. Must remember not to write official correspondence in pink lipstick and glitter pens.
That glitch out of the way, he covers news of the other glitch - the one that is kicking people's claims out of the system. The news is instant and the news is good. With dementia, my mother definitely qualifies for the discount.
The guy goes further than that, and adds my mother to an at-risk register...if there's a problem with the gas or electricity, our call becomes a priority call. We can come off that register at any time, though there's no reason to remove her from there.
Soon enough, we part company on the phone. Was there anything else the guy could help with? No. He covered it all, with fairness and transparency...and a temporary sex-change thrown in for nothing. What's a dutiful daughter to complain about?
There might be a letter requesting supporting documentation, but that's a random sampling and we shouldn't worry if we receive one. I'll have the supporting documentation ready to print, if it happens.
And that's the saga of the Warm Home Discount not being available for a very short while. The cash is a discount off electricity or gas bills. And if you know anything about dementia, you'll know that you are paying for lights that were left on. So the discount is damn handy.
I'm still a guy, if anyone thinks to check. There. Saved you the bother.
I should quickly add that the whole thing went down in Sunny Scotland. The discount is offered by energy suppliers, in addition to the standard government Winter Fuel payment.
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