Now might be the time to stop working from Home

[stories]

Hi Paul,

 

Most commercial spaces I ever looked at were insuring and repairing leases, which put a lot of additional cost and risk, above the lease cost, on the the tenant, curious if you've found the same up there or managed to find places with better terms avalibe ?

 

s

[paulears]

Insurance is a snag at the moment, among many snags, but as the other tenant upstairs is an insurance broker, he's doing the donkey work for me. They're scrutinising the pictures on my web site to ensure I am NOT a DJ, DJ businesses are not good for insurance at the moment? It's covered at the moment, but need to get the best deal.

 

I am having some amazing snags appear.

 

Electricity supply the biggest issue. The previous supplier, and the meter owner is Opus Energy, and they will NOT supply me. Minimum consumption is now set at 10,000KWH over the year. so that's around £1800 a year minimum on electricity. I tried a few companies and they all have this magic 10,000KWH bottom limit. I got advised to try a broker. I'd never heard of utility brokers, but one found me a deal with British Gas Lite, which is around the same price as my home electricity - just a tad more per unit. So I went with them.

 

I've just had a letter from Opus saying that as the current occupant, even though I have no contract with them, they are allowed, for safety reasons, to charge me a pound a day (just under) as a standing charge until I find an alternative, and also electricity used in this period will be charged at double what I pay at home. This, with some research appears accurate. Take over date is the 7th next month, so they charge me £30 because I've not gone away quickly enough!

 

Water is also causing me trouble as I have to select a supplier, who will then take over the supply from whoever it is at the moment.

 

Broadband was interesting too - Vodafone have the best deal but cannot supply. Despite a 6 month old BT socket on the wall. Vodafone's cabinet is too farm away. Anyway - despite the bad reviews (which to be frank they all have, as people only review when things go wrong) I have Talk Talk business broadband going in after a BT Openreach visit in a couple of weeks. Alarm is all in and cameras, and at the moment using the friendly insurance office wifi.

 

All the gear is now stored, and I'm setting up a temporary green screen for a job next week till I can get lighting grid up - that is just aluminium scaffolding coming from the staff company, two doors down, and the sign company 100m away is doing the signage. Amazing all the things I need are walking distance.

 

Insurance is a snag at the moment, among many snags, but as the other tenant upstairs is an insurance broker, he's doing the donkey work for me. They're scrutinising the pictures on my web site to ensure I am NOT a DJ, DJ businesses are not good for insurance at the moment? It's covered at the moment, but need to get the best deal.

 

I am having some amazing snags appear.

 

Electricity supply the biggest issue. The previous supplier, and the meter owner is Opus Energy, and they will NOT supply me. Minimum consumption is now set at 10,000KWH over the year. so that's around £1800 a year minimum on electricity. I tried a few companies and they all have this magic 10,000KWH bottom limit. I got advised to try a broker. I'd never heard of utility brokers, but one found me a deal with British Gas Lite, which is around the same price as my home electricity - just a tad more per unit. So I went with them.

 

I've just had a letter from Opus saying that as the current occupant, even though I have no contract with them, they are allowed, for safety reasons, to charge me a pound a day (just under) as a standing charge until I find an alternative, and also electricity used in this period will be charged at double what I pay at home. This, with some research appears accurate. Take over date is the 7th next month, so they charge me £30 because I've not gone away quickly enough!

 

Water is also causing me trouble as I have to select a supplier, who will then take over the supply from whoever it is at the moment.

 

Broadband was interesting too - Vodafone have the best deal but cannot supply. Despite a 6 month old BT socket on the wall. Vodafone's cabinet is too farm away. Anyway - despite the bad reviews (which to be frank they all have, as people only review when things go wrong) I have Talk Talk business broadband going in after a BT Openreach visit in a couple of weeks. Alarm is all in and cameras, and at the moment using the friendly insurance office wifi.

 

All the gear is now stored, and I'm setting up a temporary green screen for a job next week till I can get lighting grid up - that is just aluminium scaffolding coming from the staff company, two doors down, and the sign company 100m away is doing the signage. Amazing all the things I need are walking distance.

[marktownend]

Looks good.

 

I had a similar story when I took on my unit 4 years ago, Opus were the existing electricity supplier and I had the rather large charges for a short while as I sorted out who to go with, but I ended up sticking with them as I negotiated a satisfactorily low daily charge as I knew I'd be using very small amounts of power and there was no minimum consumption. Modest increase at the end of the 3 year contract but not significant enough for me to faff around for another supplier.

[Stuart91]

We used to rent to adjoining warehouses in a small industrial estate. Meter readers were invariably confused by this, and would take the numbers from the meter in one unit and think it was the other. This meant that the consumption would appear to have rocketed, and we'd get an enormous bill. (Even if the numbers were lower, they'd assume we had gone around the clock). Sorting it out was a nightmare and at one point we seriously considered just interconnecting the two units from one meter point to try and avoid it.

 

We now only have one meter for each service, but I still quiz the meter reader every time they come round and make sure they're reading the meter they think they are.

[J Pearce]

I had similar in an apartment block in Brum. It was about 10 yrs old, but apparently since it was built meter readers had been trusting the sticky labels on the meters rather than the serial numbers. Aforementioned sticky labels did not agree with the serial numbers on the bills.

It was a huge faff to fix, they hard to turn off supplies flat by flat and run a kettle or similar to proof which meter was which. It was too far gone to try to work out who had paid what historically, it got into a right mess. Still not sure I actually paid what I should have, considering I was a fairly low consumer there being in a small flat on my own, never using the drier and rarely using the heating.

[sunray]

We used to rent to adjoining warehouses in a small industrial estate. Meter readers were invariably confused by this, and would take the numbers from the meter in one unit and think it was the other. This meant that the consumption would appear to have rocketed, and we'd get an enormous bill. (Even if the numbers were lower, they'd assume we had gone around the clock). Sorting it out was a nightmare and at one point we seriously considered just interconnecting the two units from one meter point to try and avoid it.

 

We now only have one meter for each service, but I still quiz the meter reader every time they come round and make sure they're reading the meter they think they are.

I worked in a farm building workshop for a year, we had 2 supplies: a 60A 3ph for all the power and a 30A 1ph for lighting. everytime the bills arrived I had to read the meters, which were remote in a different building, and they never tallied. I'm sure the meter reader looked at the selection of about 20 meters and did eeny meeny miny moe.

[Stuart91]

One other tip - if you supplier tells you that your meter needs replacing, tell them to beat it.

 

If they put a meter in, they get a residual rental charge, if you change supplier this still gets passed on to them, and can go on for years.

 

We got suspicious when our gas meter "needed replaced" for the second time in as many years. They scheduled a visit anyway. We refused to move all the stuff in front of the meter, the fitter refused to change the meter with it in place. He let slip the details of the scam. Because there was "no access possible" he was able to take a couple of photos as proof, and still got paid for the call-out.

 

We weren't charged for any of the visits or replacements, but it's a pile of hassle that anyone running a business can do without.

 

When our electricity supplier called trying to do the same thing, we suggested that if they thought the existing meter needed replaced then our recent bills might be inaccurate so should be revised. They soon changed their tune and gave up on the idea.

[richardash1981]

One other tip - if you supplier tells you that your meter needs replacing, tell them to beat it.

They are obliged to inspect you meter (for safety) once per year, and replace it when it's calibration expires - which is usually 10 years, but can be extended (if the design is doing well in survey testing) or reduced (if the design turns out to be dud!). More than that is for the supplier's convenience (e.g. to reduce number of types they have or fit a smart meter) or financial gain. Of course most suppliers actually sub-contract their metering, especially for commercial premises ...

 

There was a tale of one block of flats where the per-flat meters fitted were not approved (this was the early days of both electronic meters and contestable connections I think), and as a result no supplier would adopt them. The residents didn't get electricity bills for a couple of years until the builder managed to sort out the adoption of the installation (which included changing all the meters!).

 

[bruce]

My dad had two gas boilers in his house at one time. One was solely for hot water, and one was a warm-air central heating system.

 

The hot water system was beyond repair, so one spring he simply stopped using it, and started using an electric immerser. The only thing on the gas was his central heating, which is off in the summer. So for the next 6 months, he used no gas at all.

 

 

Gas board: Dear Bruce’s Dad; we notice that your meter reading has not changed since it was last read 4 months ago. It is obviously broken; we’ll send out someone to replace it. In the meantime, here’s an estimated bill based on your last year’s usage.

 

Bruce’s Dad: The bill is correct. The meter is functioning correctly. I have used no gas.

 

Gas Board: We can install a second meter in series to calibrate it. If, however, the meter is found to be functioning correctly, we will charge you £100 for this work.

 

Bruce’s Dad. Let me get this clear. You think my meter is broken. I know it’s OK, because I haven’t used any gas. You want to verify that your meter is working correctly (as I say it is) and is not broken (as you say it is). And if nothing is wrong, and the bill is correct as I say, you will charge me £100?

[sunray]

My dad had two gas boilers in his house at one time. One was solely for hot water, and one was a warm-air central heating system.

 

The hot water system was beyond repair, so one spring he simply stopped using it, and started using an electric immerser. The only thing on the gas was his central heating, which is off in the summer. So for the next 6 months, he used no gas at all.

 

 

Gas board: Dear Bruce's Dad; we notice that your meter reading has not changed since it was last read 4 months ago. It is obviously broken; we'll send out someone to replace it. In the meantime, here's an estimated bill based on your last year's usage.

 

Bruce's Dad: The bill is correct. The meter is functioning correctly. I have used no gas.

 

Gas Board: We can install a second meter in series to calibrate it. If, however, the meter is found to be functioning correctly, we will charge you £100 for this work.

 

Bruce's Dad. Let me get this clear. You think my meter is broken. I know it's OK, because I haven't used any gas. You want to verify that your meter is working correctly (as I say it is) and is not broken (as you say it is). And if nothing is wrong, and the bill is correct as I say, you will charge me £100?

I knew of exactly the same situation witth elderly neighbours, the only gas appliance was a cooker which developed a leak and they stopped using it [they used to make wine in the integral shed and had an old electric cooker in there] by the time I heard about it there was a pile of letters well over half inch thick including the debt collectors etc. and the bill had risen from under £50 to something like £200. That's Life [TV program] sorted it for them in the end but it never made it to TV.

Which reminds me of my first house which was a fixer-upper and I was able to turn it into a real building site as I was still living at home. I stripped all services and some structure and was in the process of replacing them. After 2 quarters the gas meter reader arrived and as there were no floor boards I took the meter to him at the front door, I then found it difficult to not laugh while watching him struggle over all the obstructions to inspect. It really should have been obvious with missing floors, ceilings & kitchen that I was unlikely to be using Gas in the summer.

 

[musht]

I`ve had two meters tested in the past, by the time got to billing querys on No.3 they were keen to sort their admin problems out.

 

Testing meter`s is an involved and expensive process, gentleman in charge of lab told me about one that only misbehaved at -1 C, accurate at all other temps, was mounted in a North facing porch.

 

Utility suppliers make used car salesmen look like saints, lies, forged bills and attempts to test their own meters, all activities no longer surprised by major PLC`s trying it on.

[wowcup]

When the pandemic peaked, our company moved to remote work, but now we're back in the office. I liked working remotely.No, I don't want another corona outbreak but I'd like to keep working from home. I honestly don't know why we don't do that often: our company has everything it needs to operate remotely: zoom for communication, worktime for employee monitoring, trello as a task tracker. ... I understand that others may not be too keen on it because of home distractions, but it's an ideal choice for me.

[Junior8]

I stopped being organisation man and started working from home in 1999 and it was the most freeing change in my working life. The main reason was that I could work at the hours that best suited me, I am an early bird, rather than someone else. I started usually about 6am and had knocked through most of it by 10am. The best thing was the disappearance of the a) brainsuckers b) please hold my handers c) gossips and d) meetings. Travelling miles to work in groups is a grossly inefficient use of time and resources - it should happen only where there is no alternative way to get things done. I suspect in many project orientated tasks the past few months have been very enlightening to managers about who actually gets the most work done and probably how irrelevant their own tier is. Being paid for process rather than product is a very recent development in history and it has been archaic in many sectors for at least twenty years maybe more. Edited December 22, 2020 by Junior8