Taxing my brain

I wasn't fully prepared for the enormity of my council tax bill. My attempts to find out what was due and why were largely wasted. It eventually reached fever pitch and I wrote to complain about the way the council tax staff treated me.

I forget the resolution, but this series of letters stands as a testament to the stupidity of some office workers. If only someone had taken the time to explain their system, rather than losing themselves in "I can confirm"s and their own jargon, this would never have happened.

Dear Sir,

I am writing to complain about the way I have been treated by the person handling my enquiries to your department. I would like you to read the following two letters which I sent to your department, which were handled by Mrs White. The reply to my first letter was dated 6th September and was referenced MW/R/CC.

As I stated at the start of this letter, my complaint lies in the way I have been treated by your department. Perhaps, I am complaining about Mrs White herself, or perhaps it is the way she has been trained to operate that has aggrieved me; that is your problem.

As you will have seen from the above letters, I am trying to establish my responsibilities under the Council Tax arrangements for the property I rent. I do not know the ins and outs of the Council Tax calculation and no-one has offered to send me information since the start of my inquiry. Had I have not received any information from Mr Cowley (a previous tenant who I was sharing the property with) about the letter he received, I would probably have taken your original statement without question. However, seeing the statement that Mr Cowley would be liable for Ł200, without exemption, where I was liable for more, with some discount, lead me to doublecheck the situation.

The letter I received dated the 6th September did not answer my query, it simply threw some jargon at me and then stated what my bill would be approximately. Since this did not answer my question, I asked again, even apologising for not understanding. At school, I was told that I should always ask if I did not understand, this is what I did.

What I was hoping for was an explanation in the terms I had asked for. What I got instead was a telephone call at work from someone who was impatient and quite rude. The matter of the typing error in the letter of September the 6th was dealt with aggressively and I felt that I had to calm my caller down after she had clarified that HER RECORDS WERE RIGHT (does that mean I am wrong to point out a blatant error?). At the time I was too bowled over by her pushy manner to do anything other than respond to her rudeness in kind. However, in the cold light of day, it does seem that I have been treated as a fool, which I am not!

There are many ways that the situation could have been explained, a phone call to "argue it out" is probably the least prudent. The more I think about it, the more angry I become. If this is what I am supposed to be paying Council Tax for, I shall not feel happy about paying. At no stage have I ever tried to do anything but ascertain my responsibilities and organise how to meet them, yet I have been treated unpleasantly and I would like an apology.

I trust you will organise this.

Yours faithfully,

Ashley Frieze.

P.S. I now understand why my bill is what it is, but have not yet received details of how I can pay by instalments.