My water bill has been creeping up, and up, from Awg 400 to Awg 700, over the last few months. I thought it was hot and dry, and that the garden must be demanding.
Then three weeks ago I finally went to look at my water meter, it was turning like crazy, at midnight. I called nine different plumbers asking for help, see Water Leak, yet this problem was too complicated for their modest taste. I called WEB, desperate, and they could not give me any advice — they do not have leak detection technology. Luckily the island’s commercial plumbing company came to the rescue. Their plumber, a chain-smoking senior master-plumber, used his head, he did not dig aimlessly, he talked to himself, to me, to the wind, and finally figured the network of 50 year old pipes out. I live in an old house. Then he ran new ones, and even marked them, hot, cold. The meter stopped running.
The NEW water bill arrived today. It’s over Awg 1,000.
I called WEB for a payment plan. Why not? The least they could do is help me pay, in installments. Sorry, said the Customer Zero-Service agent, you must come here personally, for any such arrangement.
In a perfect world, the monitors at WEB should be warning those watching the screens that a leak was detected at a client. Then they can send an e-mail. The technology is there, it would have saved me a bundle, but, alas, we are not there yet.
I turned off my airco in solidarity last night and opened the window. It was a still night. No breeze. Solidarity flew out the window at 4am, when I was still tossing and turning.
ASD now sells a new generation of ovens that clean themselves and alert the service center that they are about to malfunction. The oven, by UNOX, has a most advanced operating system, all you need to do is punch in your wishes, and you can even video call the UNOX’s chef from the oven’s push-button panel, to help you fine tune a recipe.
I hope someone at WEB reads my column because WEB isn’t there yet.
