Some people have been reduced to begging ARMS Ltd to send them their water and electricity bill, having not received one for months.
And for some, when that bill finally came, it was a far cry from the bills previously received – and not because of their recent redesign.
Yesterday afternoon in Luqa, Rita Barbara, a widow from Cospicua, was one of the people in Luqa waiting outside the customer care centre of ARMS Ltd, the recently established utility bills handler.
“I hadn’t received a bill for a year. Then I received an envelope with four – a bill of a year for €300 and a €600 bill for three months. I came here to see why.
“They sent me a note apologising but then asked me to pay up within 70 days. I can’t be the one paying for their mistakes. This has never happened before,” Ms Barbara said.
Victor Sammut, a Sliema pensioner, was there for a similar reason. “They sent me a bill for €900 covering six months, which is much higher than usual – usually, my bill would be around €140 every four months. I think there are more mistakes happening now than before.”
The same goes for Connie D’Amato of Żebbuġ, who had not received a bill for her garage, which she barely uses, for about a year and two months. When the bill finally arrived, it was far higher than what she usually paid.
Andre Borg, from Msida, bought a house nine months ago and a few days ago got his first bill, of well over €2,000.
“We filled the forms correctly in the first place but somehow ARMS forgot a family member out. To add insult to injury we were charged for the first five months at the wrong rate. After numerous phone calls and e-mails we had no other option but to waste a whole day waiting in this queue to clarify everything directly with an ARMS Ltd customer care representative. “In 2010 one doesn’t expect situations like these to be happening.”
The company has been so heavily criticised that the Prime Minister recently felt obliged to say that the country deserved an apology for the way it has been operating.
“I feel we should apologise because the service that was given, particularly up to two weeks ago, was not what the country deserved. I regret that the people could not get the explanations they requested from a parastatal company set up to serve the people in such a delicate matter as the electricity bills,” Dr Gonzi had said in a Radio 101 interview.
But two weeks after the Prime Minister’s declaration, the agency has neither apologised nor appears to have solved its problems, at least not judging by the people queuing to speak to its customer care representatives.
On Wednesday, the Labour Party filed a parliamentary motion calling on the Auditor General to investigate the “disastrous” situation at ARMS Ltd and for a plan to rectify it.
The motion also gave the government one week to publish the €70 million contract for the installation and use of smart meters.