Not one of your better posts bloke.
Your words convict you dark skinned little poor English the list is strong and rude.
However you convict your self with your words about the bill.
You speak of 200 and something over last bill, every one knows we are being robbed.
Then say you got 80 plus back for a years over charging.
Now respect, we all like that word.
We all understand it, demand it if it is given to us.
You seem to fall in with worse in under 30,s they never give a thought to others never give respect but never forget to demand it from others.
not impressed mate.

individual, if Hasbeen's point was "an incompetent
employee not reading the meter & then making a false
statement resulting in an excessive bill", then he
could simply have made that point. What have the
meter reader's complexion and English comprehension
got to do with that point?

Instead of writing "A little dark skinned man,
who I later found has very poor English got out",
Hasbeen could simply have written "the meter reader
got out".

But that wouldn't have conveyed quite the same
message, would it?

Hasbeen, I wish I had a dog like yours that could help work on the car.
My mate had a dog that was an engineer - every time he tried to give it a bath, it made a bolt for the door.
I'm surprised that, when you called to complain, you didn't get a call centre with more gibberish speakers.
The only racism here is the fact that the electricity company can't sack him for not doing his job properly (they could have sacked a White worker with no complaints from anyone).
It's similar to the laughable 'affirmative action' that the yanks have to suffer.

Hasbeen:

I actually have a similar tale to tell. Not about the meter reader (never saw them) but our electricity bill arrived and it was way over what it should have been and I also noticed that the reading on the bill was an "estimated" reading and not an actual reading which I thought a bit odd, as out meter is very accessible. So I rang the company to query the bill. The woman tried her best to explain things away, but I ended up writing a letter anyway. So, guess what - we eventually received a very apologetic letter from the company with a full refund to being over charged on our bill. It does pay to question bills.

Yes, everyone's power bills have increased- obviously they will never decrease unless we switch to solar power.

No, it makes absolutely NO difference whether the meter readers are black, white, red or yellow, OR whether they have problems with English or not.

A disgraceful, racist thread that should never have seen the light of day.

As Yabby points out Hasbeen 'its to pay for all those expensive power lines and poles' LOL...my house was vacant for 6 weeks with one of my children ill [therefore, was crashing into bed exhausted late of a night and am gone each day], with the exception of the fridge, no electricity had been used for this period/account.

A $350 electricity bill arrived in which I politely explained the story to the State's provider. The water bill for the same period was $200.

"you will need to pay these as this is the reading we have".

When I find the time during January it may be a good idea to request all meter readings for 2010 in hard copy.