Where is your contract with Ovo Energy? Companies cannot just go charge random people willy-nilly like that.

You just read a story of a company doing just that

You have missed the point of the story. GP is not a customer of Ovo energy. They sent him a bill in error.

“Companies cannot just go charge random people”

And yet they do. Anyone can send anyone a bill.

Partially "slamming" where agents would try to get folks to switch to a different billing provider, and get paid a commission. So some fraudulently "sign up" random addresses they were supposed to visit.

The other case has been miscommunication over phone or email to someone actually requesting to change billing provider. Or error on the part of the potential customer.

I've had a bill from some random billing provider. In my case it is common for folks newly arriving in the block of flats to get the digits of the address transposed. Due to them using the common English convention, whereas the part of Scotland I'm in uses a different convention.

OP said "Ovo Energy made a clerical error and sent me a bill, leading to a dispute." I don't see what a company in that situation hopes they can accomplish without a contract for providing the service. Even if they knew OP's meter number.

> I don't see what a company in that situation hopes they can accomplish

If you replace the word "company" in your sentence with "employee", do you come to a different conclusion?

A "company" is merely an amalgamation of the employees under it. When it comes to customer service you're often left feeling the impact of individual employees and the motivators that influence them. For example, metrics about times spent on calls, number of tickets worked on, new accounts created, resolutions that end in the company's favour etc.

You're absolutely right that Ovo energy has no legal basis to charge money to OP, and he would very likely win his dispute. But the _employee_ gets the ticket put in front of them and is heavily incentivised to close the ticket quickly and in the company's favour. The employee won't be the one going to court, and might not even be the person who picks the ticket up next when OP indignantly responds.

So if OP's meter number is as easily accessible as OP's address and the question for the employee quickly comes down to either: - Update OPs bill with the "correct" meter number. Meter number now matches address, bill is now valid. Submit response and bill. Move on to next ticket.

- Update ticket with "correct" address, send bill to other address. (new addressee may pay or may make same claim as OP). Submit response and send bill. Move on to next ticket.

The support employee doesn't know which option is actually the correct one unless they spend time digging into the issue to actually solve it well. But everything in the customer support world is almost always set up to disincentivise this. The result is the employee making the quickest choice that matches with their incentives of closing ticket and the company getting money.

Whether the employee acted rightly or wrongly doesn't really matter much, they're not the ones going to court over it. They might not even end up being reprimanded.

(If you can't tell I've been through the wringer on this multiple times and finding leverage to get the customer support employees to solve your case well is increasingly a nightmare.

Sorry for the long response).

Anyone can send a bill but you can just throw it in the trash without even responding if there is not contract...

This can and does end up with letters from collection agencies and debt collectors knocking on your door.

Unfortunately the dystopian levels incompetence of massive PLCs means it's often less hassle to quickly prove your correctness, regardless of things like burden of proof etc.

The end goal of this line of thinking is tracking every molecule in the universe. Exagerated I know, but we're moving in that direction.

The speedy success of Germany invading France in 1940 had more to do with their use of radios and giving commanders on the field some latitude on how to accomplish objectives than with the consequences of the Versailles treaty on the population. The French Army and the British Expeditionary Force were more stuck in a WWI style of command from the top that proved vulnerable to speed. But it wasn't clear cut as the "fast attack" plan was initially rejected by the German top brass, themselves still stuck in the past.

An alternative, because the use of dice is to effectively decide an outcome: for example, Knight (Player1) fights Troll. Have both players agree on a short set of possible outcomes. For this example:

1-Knight defeats Troll 2-Troll defeats Knight 3-Troll is wounded but escapes 4-Knight is wounded but escapes 5-Another character or party comes into scene

Then Player2 decides which outcomes are assigned to which numbers (1-5), keeping them a secret and Player1 picks a number not knowing the outcome it stands for.

It's quicker and within reach of us, mere mortals.

That long article on the second link was really good, thank you.

I use Fedora Workstation. It's boring and less customizable than other distros out of the box, but I like it like that. I pretty much just add the extension 'dash to panel' and call it a day.

Microsoft has their own plans for where they want to go with Windows and it certainly is not catering to their users. The same could be said from most big companies I guess -- all about lock-in, value extraction, planned obsolescence. I see Valve/Steam as one of the few exceptions, probably because they are not publicly traded.

There's a lot of good food places in Lisbon that you might not be familiar with yet. Enjoy your stay

In Portugal you can have one or more last names, but the very last one will be from the father's side. Unless both parents have the same double-barreled name? Never seen that here.

Great name. Names can be so generic but this hits the nail on the head