The dreaded email arrived: it’s time for the annual electricity meter reading. I immediately noticed it wasn’t from the usual company this time, but it didn’t look like phishing. In fact, it explicitly stated it was trustworthy and definitely not a scam, right in the email.
We would like to draw your attention to the fact that if you want, you can still report your usage in your universal service provider’s/trader’s application, but this does not replace the annual reading.
Alright, sounds serious, let’s do this. Photo-based reading is only possible through a mobile app, but not with any of the three I’ve already installed during the electricity provider chaos of recent years in Hungary. Instead, it’s with a new one. Okay, download, login, no good.
I didn’t despair. Let’s read the email further:
Please download the Whatever Customer Service application and request a new password using your previously registered email address by selecting the ‘Request new password’ option. After that, you will be able to submit your meter reading.
It seems someone else has run into this before, so let’s generate one. “Unknown email address,” it says for the address saved in 1Password for Whatever Customer Service. I didn’t study this much to get stuck on such a trivial thing, so I grabbed the address from the ‘To:’ line of the same email and pasted it in, just in case. “Unknown email address.” At this point, I started to wonder how this was possible, but let’s read on.
Our online customer service is available at: (here and there)
Well, they can surely help here, right? Click, it opens, asks for my email and password. I tried it just in case, but it doesn’t work here either. Login with the fancy new government-backed identity provider, that must be it. Let’s see, I log in, and it asks for my email and password. Never mind then.
It seems no such account exists, so let’s register one. So far, I had three entries in 1Password for the previous iterations of the same company. Now there will be a fourth, but the system can handle it. It says to enter the meter’s identifier, just 33 characters, so easy to remember.
Luckily, the meter’s identifier is in the email! From here, it’s a smooth ride, right? It also asks for the postal code. I assume it’s for the place of consumption, where the meter is. Sounds logical, right? I type it in. Next. No good, no such identifier. I double-check to see if any of the 33 characters got corrupted during copy-paste, but no.
Then it hits me: what if I have to enter the billing address instead of the consumption address? Okay, I type it in. Next. No good, no such identifier.
You know what, Whatever Customer Service? Kiss my ass.