Southern Electric - Calendar Dates

It seems essential to record the receipt date of all communications when dealing with energy companies in general, but Southern Electric specifically. Especially those (snail mail) letters that have no explicit date on the envelope. The dates actually recorded can suggest an alternative reality: the internal content of letters can easily be interpreted as delay by the customer. When the opposite situation applies

Southern Electric
Southern Electric - North Sea Gas And Hess Energy
Southern Electric - The Deceit
Southern Electric - The Letter
Southern Electric - Update

An attempt to settle an account on-line could only be assumed successful since after paying the electricity bill (11th September 2010), the window closed and failed to reopen so that the gas bill could not be settled. On re-opening the account, status details had disappeared and although the login was successful, the account had become 'unknown' with any amount owing on any account, either paid or not, set to £0.00. This made it impossible to continue any on-line transaction. An explicit e-mail was sent (11th September 2010) to notify Southern Electric of this issue and in the meantime, an e-mail receipt was received that proved that the electricity payment had been successfully made on the recorded date (11.09.2010). The small discount (2.5%) that would be credited if payment by 14th September 2010 was met and should, therefore, be received.

Several days later, the account had been restored and was accessible, but no alerting e-mail was ever received to advise about this restoration of account details and only by continually (daily) checking the website was this eventually detected. Presumably, the notification alert from my e-mail possibly initiated action. I have no easy way of knowing and is... unknown. Gas payment was duly made. Two days later, letters dated 14th September 2010 were delivered stating that both electricity and gas payments were now overdue. Red reminders. The electricity bill had been settled on 11th September 2010 and can be proven by a dated receipt. This clearly shows that the date explicitly printed on the electricity bill 'Red reminder' had already been prepared with the 'payment by' advice date.

The gas payment was made on 17th September 2010 and so falls outside the 'payment by' discount (2.5%) date. However, my attempt to pay this was 11th September 2010 and inside this specified date. The disappearance of my account details that prevented this payment happening was nothing to do with me. When my next payment becomes due (29th November 2010), I will be in a position to know how to proceed: pay promptly or delay until the 'Red reminder'. The small discount (2.5%) will then clearly be sacrificed, but...

An e-mail was received dated 20th September 2010 (9 days after my initial alerting memo) advising that payments had been made: electricity on 11th September 2010 and gas on 17th September 2010.

It's as though everything was suspended around 14th September 2010 to capture all the unfortunate (and, of course, unexpected) errors and later, as though nothing had happened, just... continued.