UCS all over the world on user price increases, disservices, untimeliness of control interventions
The users are every 3×2, the services provided are often not up to par, the interventions in support of the consumer are mild and slow: so not really there. The increases applied are devastatingly worrying, because they have reduced and will increasingly reduce the standard of living of current income and will erode people’s savings. To those who have already suffered, it is news today that others will be implemented for gas from 1 July until 30 June 2023. Clearly and very ironically, no one has thought of calling those who represent consumers to express this desire in advance, clearly the interventions to control they have not had and do not have the same lightning-fast execution. It takes a moment to put your hands in your pockets, the reasons are always ready, some objectively real, others subjectively aimed at healing completely different situations. The solutions to improve services, on the other hand, almost always remain on the table with all due respect to those who, willingly or not, see their portfolio tapering without even having an optimal counterbalance. Waste collection with overflowing bins, reported for years, the exact same situation. Telephone time slot to users, from Monday to Friday from 8.30 to 10.30, reported completely unsatisfactory, same situation. Reading of utilities and issuing of enormously different invoices such as dating, reported for years, the same situation. We could go on with the examples, but it is clear to everyone what the reality is. Mind you, we are not blaming the workers of these services, because people must be put in the conditions to be able to operate at their best, we are simply saying that problems must be faced and solved by making a system, by following the facts to the words, by sharing Each to find the best solution, taking their own responsibilities. The press release is of the last hour, which clearly has not been sent to the Assoconsumatori who clearly have not been involved again, where the ORDER No. 1 with effect from 06/27/2022 declared a State of Water Emergency. Therefore, in the period of water emergency, all citizens are invited to respect some anti-waste rules. We believe as UCS that it is more than in emergencies there are rules, what we do not understand, and that perhaps with the preventive meetings we have to ask, evaluate and maybe even explain to consumers, in a correct protection of optical resources is the one written in the statement a few lines after: “In the period of water emergency, the tariff currently envisaged for consumption of domestic users above 30 m³ / month is increased by € 20.00 for each m³ of user water exceeding 30 m³”. We also ask ourselves what is meant by: “In the same period of water emergency, the Autonomous State Company for Public Services can proceed, by coercion, to reduce the supply of water to consumers for different uses”; Does the AASS cut off the supply to a particularly wasteful user? And how does he do it when he complains about not being able to get to the desired individual water meters for various reasons? The same reasons that cause invoices to arrive at a very long distance from each other and at a distance from the reading of the invoice itself. And what does “consumers use differently” mean? And reduction, as long as they are able to do it on the individual, by how much? Here, too, instead of asking a posteriori, with the meetings he could have helped to dare answers to users who are rightly more and more disheartened. As written by everything and all arguments or situations, which as such can be shared or not, improved or about which and on which one can disagree, what just begins to annoy me a lot, to be kind and that I think annoys the whole population, says UCS President Francesca Busignani, is this constant rubber wall made up of excuses, or of taking time, or of forgetting or repetition of what needs to be done with a view to improving, which then after years it re-presents not as a thing done, but as a repetition of what is due. If someone thinks that we will “let go” of what is wrong or that needs to be improved in every area, from this to the BKN compensation, to the high prices, to the strangling bureaucracy to protect consumers and consequently restore confidence in the system, they are wrong to big. Unfortunately, many San Marino citizens will face the high cost of living by cutting down on its quality, risking moreover to burden, negatively, on a mental state that already this health emergency has loaded too much. Clearly and very ironically, a la Nanni Moretti: “let’s continue like this, let’s get hurt”.
cs Union of San Marino Consumers – UCS