Powered by Useless Utilities

11th November 2006

You'd think that in this modern age of computers, the internet, inter-connectivity and nationalised databases that finding information about a property would be merely a few mouse clicks away.

How wrong could I have been!

After providing them with the complete address (not just a guessed one mind you, but the official full address straight from Royal Mail) surely finding the property would be easy.

Postcode, no luck there; full address; still can't find it. What more do they want, the longitude and latitude? Eventually after hounding the letting agent I finally got hold of the previous account number and hey presto, they found it.

This problem was repeated at almost every one of the utility providers I contacted. Maybe it was something I was doing, but then how did other companies find my flat straight away?

After a little bit of investigation I found the crux of the problem. Approximately 18 months ago the building that is now my block of flats was a field.

It seems that these large, national companies simply weren't updating their information. Why is this? Budget cuts? Poor practices? Laziness? Ignorance?

With an ever increasing demanding for new housing (practically modern flats) this seems a worrying trend. Does this mean that every new house or block of flats wont appear on the books of basic utility provides for over a year?

Maybe it was just my flat; maybe I moved in in-between them updating their databases; maybe I'm just unlucky. If not, they really need to re-evaluate their business practices and update! Well, that is my rant over for this week!