AIBU to think there *is* such thing as a free ride and that I am on it?

[HenriettaVioletta]

Free ride ticket #1: the council has completely wrongly suddenly decided that I'm entitled to council tax support. So they've applied it to my bill, which I always overpay so I don't have to pay December's, and now I'm not due to pay any more this year. They've also transferred a £100 "Covid support payment" to me. I rung them up twice, once for the discount and once for the 100 quid, and said I'm not due it. They say I am. So, free council services.

Free ride ticket #2: I signed up for a switch to avro back in August, not knowing that they would take ages to do it and then go bust, which is ofc exactly what's happened. However, according to octopus they haven't heard of me and according to my old supplier I've definitely left and gone to avro. So no one wants to send me a bill. There is no bill.

Free bin collection and free heating throughout the winter for me! What a time to be alive!

• don’t think anyone is ever going to come asking.

Put the money aside. Honestly. Sorry to rain on your parade but you’ll be in schtuck if it’s decided in a year’s time that a mistake was made and you owe. That it was the council’s mistake will have little or no bearing.

Sorry, speak from experience.

Careful with the heating, we got stung for £2000 a few years back when Eon discovered their cockup that I was keeping quiet about!

Same. Our meter didn’t work. I told them so. I kept submitting meter readings for two years and they took some themselves. Two years later they suddenly realised my meter wasn’t working and back charged me for electricity. When I pointed out that asking for two years worth of electricity in one go was a bit off, I was told I had known it wasn’t working and should have been putting money away to pay for the bill as I must have known I wasn’t paying enough. They agreed to let me pay half and pay it off over time as a “goodwill gesture”

I switched broadband and it got totally fucked up and I was weeks ++ with no internet, endless complaints etc. It started working eventually and a year or so later I realized nothing was coming out my bank! Phoned and confessed and they told me I was wrong, they didn't provide my internet. Queue a rather daft and eventually quite argumentative phone call and I eventually gave up. I got another couple of years free internet before a power cut and the power came back but the internet didn't. Signed up with a different company just in case! Happy times

Slightly different but we had trouble with our credit card being cloned repeatedly. Cancelled the card and phoned the clothing company I'd ordered from as the payment was declined. They insisted I didn't owe them any money and got quite stroppy when I was explaining about the cancelled card. In the end I said, if you decide I do owe this, give me a call. That was about 3 years ago and I got £120ish worth of free clothes.

I remember watching some show years ago- a reality type thing (was it about benefits? Budgeting?) where a family hadn't received a gas bill for seven years, and then shortly after the programme aired they were stung for seven years worth of gas by their supplier who suddenly worked out they weren't billing this household.