Progress?
The local housing stock in a large part of the North East of England has been sold or transferred to a kind of housing association and is no longer being maintained by the local council...in fact the local council and a number of others have been dissolved and become a unitary council run from one place.
When you paid your rent, you hand in a card...you pay your money and the card is returned to you with information of how much you have paid, any credit you have and they mark on the card when your next payment date will be. No receipts to be lost and all the details are on the rent card as well as the data being on a computer system.
So what has happened now the housing stock has been transferred?
You have a little cheap looking plastic wallet in which you have to keep a letter with a customer reference number, you need that at all times to make any payment and link it to your address. When you pay you are given a slip of paper(receipt)and you have to save these up. The receipts contain no information other than what you have paid on the day. No other information about balance or what is owed on the account. They cannot even work out when your next payment date will be.
If you want to know that you have to go another desk in the same building and someone has to work everything out with a calculator. And nothing is written down.
As I say...is this progress? I don't think so.
When you paid your rent, you hand in a card...you pay your money and the card is returned to you with information of how much you have paid, any credit you have and they mark on the card when your next payment date will be. No receipts to be lost and all the details are on the rent card as well as the data being on a computer system.
So what has happened now the housing stock has been transferred?
You have a little cheap looking plastic wallet in which you have to keep a letter with a customer reference number, you need that at all times to make any payment and link it to your address. When you pay you are given a slip of paper(receipt)and you have to save these up. The receipts contain no information other than what you have paid on the day. No other information about balance or what is owed on the account. They cannot even work out when your next payment date will be.
If you want to know that you have to go another desk in the same building and someone has to work everything out with a calculator. And nothing is written down.
As I say...is this progress? I don't think so.
posted by The Great Gildersleeve | 5:27 pm
1 Comments:
I don't pretend to understand housing issues in the UK, but as I was reading your post, I thought to myself, "This doesn't seem like progress." Then I read your last words. :)
I eagerly await the root beer review!
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