A rant about the Government and the "S" word........

We have a programme here in Southern Ontario called the Eco Energy Grant How it works is you have an audit done, which costs just over $300. The company who does the audit submits a report to the Government and you get $150 back from the government. You have 18 months to upgrade your home and to make it more energy efficient, and then you have another audit done and again they submit a report with what improvements you have done and you can receive money back from both the Federal and the Provincial governments. For example for putting in our wood burning insert, we should receive $375 from both governments.

Now the company we chose to do the initial audit was the company who did our home inspection. We had the audit done on May 7th, and it went fine. However by beginning of June I still hadn't received a report, so to cut a long story short, after many nagging phone calls I finally got my report in July. One of the issues, was that the people who we bought the house from, had applied for another grant back in 2007 for home improvement. So when the company filed an audit report for us, the Government saw the address and red flags were raised, as they thought we were trying to "double dip," not realizing it was different owners. The audit company was supposed to sort all this out.

So as far as I knew everything was all sorted out. Back in September I called the 1-888 number to see where our $150 was, and they said it takes six weeks to process and as it was barely six weeks they couldn't see our file number in the system, and to call back.

So I called back last week, and there is still no record of our file, so she said she would contact the cheque department and they would get back to me. I call the people who did the audit and told them to make sure they had filed our report.

Fast forward to Tuesday, and I get a call from this guy from our Provincial government to tell me they still have no record of our file, and to call the Federal Government at this 1-800 number. So I call the audit people and have a heated conversation with her and told her to get this all sorted as this wasn't my problem. I then call the Federal Government number and to cut a long story short, was told by the guy it was a Provincial issue and nothing to do with the Federal Government. I felt like a school girl being told off by the headmaster. So I get back on the phone with the Provincial Government guy and left a message with him telling him in no uncertain terms, that he had to sort it out with the people who did the audit, as I was fed up with the whole situation.

He called me back so I told him what the Federal guy had said. Why we have to have two sets of government has always been puzzling to me. Other countries manage with one Government, but no in Canada we have to have two. And believe me, one doesn't know what the other is doing most of the time. It's no wonder people get so frustrated having to deal with them.

So the gist of this I still don't have my $150 refund, and until we get all this sorted out, we can't do the second audit, so we can claim our grant back, not that we are at this stage, and probably won't be ready to do it until next September or October; but at the rate we are going it may take until then to get the first report sorted out!!! Oh, and in case you are wondering we WILL NOT being using the same audit people to do the final audit, as they are a bunch of idiots!!!!

Then yes we saw snow on Tuesday. Granted it was nothing exciting and didn't lay, but there was snow, so I am guessing it won't be long now before we have to shovel!!

That's about it for one day, I think I have whined enough!!!

***Had a phone call after 9pm on Tuesday night, I was already in bed, I wasn't feeling too good. It was the Home Inspector who did the audit, the Government (I think Federal) want proof of when we took possession of the house..........call the land registry office they'll tell you.........but no I have to photocopy the papers from the lawyers and give them to the Home Inspector. I told the Home Inspector, I was not a happy camper with all of this. Why is nothing straight forward anymore?***