A chara, – Like thousands of others who had already paid the household charge, my wife and I both recently received letters from our local authority telling us that “the amount now due including late payment fees and interest is €127 per property”. The letter came from the head of finance in Wicklow County Council, but I gather that a similar form of words was used by councils throughout the country.
I didn’t know whether to be annoyed or amused at this letter. First of all it’s clear the council haven’t a clue whether I’ve paid or not, and there is a reference to the possibility that the letter may have been sent in error “due to the manner in which names and addresses can be entered and recorded differently in computer systems by the public”. God forbid the mistake could have been made by the council! The letter then proceeds to tell me that if I have already paid the charge I’m to contact, not Wicklow County Council, which sent out the letter, but “the Central Bureau at LoCall 1890357357”. I’m expected, it seems, to ring up the central section that I paid the money to in the first place to tell them what they already know! If I need to correspond, again it’s not to Wicklow County Council, which sent out the letter, that I’m to address my issues, but to “Household Charge” at a post office box in Dublin.
Despite the fact that the whole payment system for the household charge was an online one, the letter makes no mention of any contact email address for either “the Central Bureau” or Wicklow County Council. My reward for contacting the Central Bureau will be “to avoid receiving any further letters”. In my innocence, I made a few futile attempts to contact the LoCall number given, but then I thought to myself why not wait instead for the next instalment of this bureaucratic comedy of errors. – Is mise,