MovieChat Forums > Dreams of a Life (2012) Discussion > I was reading ideas on how the electric ...

I was reading ideas on how the electric bill and rent may have been paid

posted 12 years ago by venus974
13 replies | jump to latest

But there'd be other clues something was wrong.What about her mail,mine is over flowing after a couple of days.Not paying taxes. Even if she did have some money stored away automatically paying bills it would have to be a lot of money to last three years. She had jobs, she must have needed income and She lived in a crappy apt.- if she had money you'd think she would have had a nicer place. Just to many things the movie should have explained and easily could have gotten the answers to. Didn't clear anything up, left me with more questions..

[–] Slogutis 12 years ago

I know, everyone gets junk mail. Very befuddled about the whole as well.

The only thing I can think about when it comes to the apartment is that she had a landlord that covered all the utilities in the rent. Then maybe this landlord managed a lot of property and simply took a while for him to notice that the rent wasn't being paid by one of his tenants.

Some people do overlook some crazy things.

[–] TheBeardedWonder 12 years ago

They showed how nobody noticed the mail: she has a slot in her front door for it to be dropped off in the foyer. It's not a box on the street, it goes right into her house in a big pile. The utilities being paid by the landlord makes sense, I just don't understand the rent being paid.

Even IF it's a super cheap place and even IF she paid a year in advance, that still leaves 2 years unpaid, NO landlord would let that go I don't think, two years is a long time. Also the amount it said she owed was only ~$3600 (after adjusting for exchange rate), making her rent $150 a month. Come on, that doesn't exist in a place like she lived! Everything being paid automatically is possible but unlikely...

"Ugh, now i'm going to have to go online and look at turtles." - Michael Scott

[–] Prelude_in_C_maj 12 years ago

From what I gather, the apartment was one she was given following on from being in a shelter for women fleeing from domestic abuse. I can't be certain but this seems to have been what we in the UK call a housing association apartment. These have heavily subsidized rent, thus it would have been relatively cheap. It was also just a studio apartment, so cheap for that reason too.

Another possibility is that the rent was paid from a standing order from a bank account that didn't run out of fund until well into that three years. And then maybe it was only then that they started to notice it wasn't being paid in.

The standing order might have covered bills automatically too -- I know I have the option to do this to my electricity bill by calculation on what I use, but I still pay mine manually so that it's at actual cost. But hers might have been automated, and if her previous good jobs had left money in the bank that could have funded things for a while. These are my best guesses.

[–] AssetsonFire 12 years ago

The electric bill would've been minimal for the timescale, so not a priority to chase up. Rent could have been covered by housing benefit and no income means no taxes, and again, a few hundred pounds of outstanding taxes from before she died probably wouldn't be a priority in a bureaucratic and busy HMRC.

~.~
I WANT THE TRUTH! http://www.imdb.com/list/ze4EduNaQ-s/

[–] venus974 12 years ago

I'm in the U.S. I get a disconnection notice EVERY month because I'm a month behind and haven't caught up. I'm not exaggerating either- I pay the back amount on time not to be shut off. I'm only one month behind- but a tv on for that time frame is a lot and not to be missed. It was 3 years, not minimal-and she had jobs, they showed that. Plus- it seems any tv I left on for 3 years straight would still be working.

[–] plake7 12 years ago

There are strict laws about how disconnection works it the UK and certain groups are protected from disconnection it is possible that this woman would have been in one of those groups, so there would be very little the power company could do.

[–] regexfan 9 years ago

There! You said it yourself, you live in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. What makes you think the system is the same everywhere in the world? What makes you think what might happen to you in certain situations will happen to everyone else if they face the same situations? Many from the UK here have answered your questions perfectly, yet you're still asking why, why, why.

[–] venus974 9 years ago

I received an e-mail that I got a responce to a ? I asked, so read your post. Excuse me- but I DO NOT still keep asking why, why, why. I posted that 3 years ago and some people in the UK did answer some of my questions- months and years after my initial post, and when did I say I know how every country does things? That's why I asked. Why did you post? You didn't have anything useful to say, just an angry rant.

[–] omgjayde 12 years ago

There was a scene near the beginning where they showed that either the film maker or the journalists had sent a request releasing any information about any financial records or payment of bills from the appropriate places and that their requests were denied for not being covered under the information act for not having any relevancy to be useful to the community.

[–] persen1 12 years ago

In Denmark, income and bills are done 100% automaticly over your banking system if you make such a contract with your bank.
Here it is also possible to lay dead in your appartment for a very long time if no one misses you and it has also happened, but mostly with senior citizens.

But unlike the U.K, journalists can be allowed to look in to their finances to see how it was possible for some one laying dead for so long with out any one wondering about the person. The story is always the same, the automatic money transfers to and from the bank account.

[–] yumicho 11 years ago

It's possible she was on a key meter. It's very common in low income housing, but even in moderately nice housing, especially for shorter term lets, landlords or the energy companies will install them. It's basically a PAYG meter. You go to a corner shop and put money on a card. If there is no debt to pay off, the only thing that comes off the balance is what you use. If she had put a lot on the electric and only had one or two things running, it could have lasted a while. I watched this months ago. Was the electric still on when they opened the flat? If not, it's very possible she was on card meters for electric and gas. When they run out, no one is going to notice but the people in the flat they supply.

Everything else is almost certainly paid for by direct debit. It is very hard here to pay any other way. I doubt she had things like pay television. Her phone would have just gone dead. It's also hard to evict people in council flats here. If her money ran out, it might have taken a while for them to get an order to evict if she was a council tenant (if they even tried that).

The one thing that would have had people knocking would have been the licence fee people. They don't have the right to bust into a home though. It can be paid through direct debit, but if her money ran out in the first year or two, I am sure some of that pile were notices about paying it. I love the BBC, but even we have received notices when we've paid for the year, cancelled the direct debit so we could switch accounts for the next year. Despite being paid up, it took a couple of months for them to stop sending the letters.

[–] felice-witch-1 11 years ago

I live in the UK and have had trouble sometimes paying my rent/bills in the past so maybe I can clarify some questions! Yes, regarding the rent, she was in government subsidised housing, called a housing association in the UK and the way they found out she was dead was because she was about to be evicted (you hear them call out their company name at the beginning of the documentary). Now I lived in a housing association years ago and my flat mate was claiming housing benefit from Hackney Council (in London). But it took the council over a year to pay her the rent money (I know, crazy) and in that time the housing association did not ask us once for the rent that was in arrears (which amounted to several thousand pounds)!!! These housing associations are often not very well run, and also, because they are social housing, a LOT of people are in arrears so I guess they don't have the staff to chase everyone. Or it's just administrative "mistakes". Regarding the bills, I think it is pretty much illegal in the UK to cut off essential supplies, like gas, electricity and water. The only thing companies can do is threaten to prosecute you and eventually black list you so you can't get any credit or even a current account/debit card for 7 years (this happened to a friend of mine). Disconnecting someone of these essential services can actually cause their death, especially water and heating, so it's illegal. Also, some housing associations include some bills in the rent. Council tax however I would have thought would have been the most difficult in this situation. However if she was on benefits, she may have been exempt from it. But once again, she would have still needed to sign on for her benefits every two weeks. Although if she had a disability benefit I am not sure how that works. However, once again, councils are pretty crap in the UK and they may not have noticed she wasn't exempt anymore for a long time. I've known this to happen! As for TV licence, I think they spend all their money on advertising to scare people but rarely go to someone's house. And as someone else said, they can't break into your house, only knock on the door, so if no one answers, they wouldn't be able to do much (and don't even know if they could do a court summons without proof that the person has a tv - and of course a court summons wouldn't have achieved much in this case). Although, another friend of mine never paid for a tv license as student and no one bothered her in 3 years!

Regarding direct debit, I would have thought that she didn't pay anything by direct debit. If she had, her bank account would have gone into arrears and I am sure the bank would have acted far more swiftly than the housing association or any other company in these matters!

Actually I just checked on wikipedia and she was with Metropolitan Housing Association, which was the same one I was with in Hackney, who didn't once ask for any rent in a year! Yeah, so that clarifies that. They are rubbish and incompetent (at least in those years, they did get a bit better later on, and now they have blood thirsty rent collectors who won't let you get away with anything).

[–] Cherry-Princess 9 years ago

My Nan has been in a London hospital for a year - they wouldn't let us take over her bank details for like 6 months, but her DDRs for rent and bills were all coming out. in a way you can see why people would think it was all fine.