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Won't pay. Can't make me...

28 November 2007

Fighting customer debt is not always a straightforward issue. Consider the following, which a colleague of the great man swears is gospel.

Apparently, in the early days of Scottish Water, the company had quite a battle with a reluctant customer who owned a pub. Said landlord was only persuaded to pay up when a posse of police, JCBs and assorted trucks turned up and threatened to turn off his supply. This persuaded the guy to come out with a brown paper bag with ten thousand pounds in notes of the realm (and no, he wasn’t a member of the Russian mafia).
Later, the same publican was proving a reluctant payee again. Water company officials were threatened with baseball bats and shotguns. The small “army” returned. And once again the landlord emerged with a paper bag containing the requisite number of notes.
Now, he pays his bills on time. This appears to suggest that drastic action can, sometimes, yield a result.

Tags: Scottish Water, water

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