Today I tried to contact someone at British Gas, my energy billing company. I failed, utterly failed

  • Started live chat 48th in queue, 25 minutes later 12th in queue and logged out from website
  • restarted live chat 58th in queue, looked and gave up
  • Phoned, went through menu system and spoke to someone, after the FBI interrogation where I had given every detail I had, I mean every detail, as the last piece of information was given, line went dead. I still had not even explained what it was about.
  • Waited as they had asked for my phone numbers in case they would ring back to recover the line they dropped. I should have known better.
  • 10m later I rang again, went through the menu system only to be told it was now a 16m wait, so gave up
  • went through complaint procedure and web form, took 6 minutes

All in all about an hour of my time, all I wanted was my 11+ year old smart meters to either be automatically read, or even replaced so that my energy monitor would work and to ask them how long this would take as I have been waiting 14 months.

Complaints have a handling time of between 7 and 21 working days….so I am not holding my breath. You would think when they only have one job to do, they would excel at it…but they clearly couldn’t care less about the customer.

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    I am sure this wasn’t the first time and won’t be the last for all of us. It’s rare you get to hear sorry after a long wait. The bigger the company, the
    greater the probability they will lack the basic courtesy. I won’t blame the folks on the other-side of the phone though. They are also like us. It’s the company culture and policy, tbh. 😊

    Edit:

    They can learn a lesson or two from the likes of Amazon and Apple

    dfk41 Just move supplier!

    Who to, who is better and I fixed my rate with them s it’s £200 to move (£100 per fuel). Besides, I’d just like them to do their job properly.

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        Yeah any type of phone based customer service interaction is usually about as fun as plucking eyelashes.

        The thing that makes me go ‘grrr’ is drivers using their mobile phone. I’ll walk through town past a queue of cars at lights and at least 50% are on their phones. Mum’s in their Volvo XC90, car full of family, can’t even get off their Instagram…

        If I’m on the motorbike and I see it in a car next to me I’ll usually have a word. They usually put it away.

        Just no excuse. Zero.

        As a designer I’m always trying to think of a tech implementation to just stop it from happening but with navigation, passengers, the fact you might be on a train/bus etc it’s hard to lock features using the motion sensor as you need to determine who the driver is.

        I noticed Google are able to determine if you’re on a motorbike (presumably by lean-angles and speed in the gyroscope) so we must be close to a method. It just needs to recognise that you’re a driver and then restrict functionality to navigation and hands-free phone calls.

          Ernie1 Have to agree, using mobiles while driving is personally scary, not to mention 100% illegal in Qld. Very grrr.

          Only did it once, decades ago and the loss of vehicle control scared the chicken soup out of me. Seriously glad I’m not on a motorcycle or pushbike these days, it’s an unacceptable extra risk.

            DavecUK unbelievably frustrating and making a complaint within a systemically broken culture li,e that is pointless.

                tompoland Lol, a bit like having to communicate by phone with a government department. Make sure your mobile battery is fully charged 😴

                    CafeNoir I also hate phone automated call handling that take what seems like a lifetime to navigate a massive set of menus, all with very specific seeming options. Eventually when you have disappeared down a blind alley, with no question seemingly covering your issue, it’s press star and wait.

                    Or when such a system just automatically hangs up on you!!!

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                      Things that make me go grrr!

                      Graffiti (and we are not talking Banksie’s here). Went on a trip to brussels a few years back and virtually every building in the centre had awful graffiti including really nice old buildings but even worse…even white vans parked for any length of time had graffiti scrawled all over them. Any TV programme that spends five minutes telling you what’s ‘coming up’ then re-capping after the break as if we only have the memories of a fish and excessive packaging just to name three.

                      On automated customer service lines with voice recognition I’ve had some luck just saying ‘speak to an agent’ even if the option is not explicitly mentioned.

                      Or just continuously requesting it until it says ‘Sorry, we can’t understand your request, please hold while we connect you to someone who can help’

                      Doesn’t always work, but occasionally does!

                      Deceptive marketing practices that prey on the naive, ignorant, gullible or desperate. The must surely be a special corner of hell reserved for those who deliberately rip people off.

                        tompoland Deceptive marketing practices that prey on the naive, ignorant, gullible or desperate. The must surely be a special corner of hell reserved for those who deliberately rip people off.

                        Wait till you hear what Pfizer and the likes have been doing … you won’t be happy

                            LMSC “… but we value you as a customer… the wait time is approximately 37 minutes …” queue annoying bland music…

                            • LMSC replied to this.

                                tompoland No apologies or sorry for keeping us on hold for such a long time. Imagine the person at the end is annoyingly rude. That person is probably as frustrated as we all are.

                                  Actually I just recalled my most infuriating call for customer non-service. Around 40 minutes in the queue before someone answered and transferred me to another someone but I got cut off in-between the two. Back to the start of the queue. Such fun.

                                  drdre89 maybe start a QAnon thread for those who are interested. No offence drdre but my preference would be to not have political or religious or conspiracy posts which are off topic popping up. Full respect for your right to believe what you choose though.

                                      I think Amazon deserves some love here, certain activities of the company make me go grrr. However, their customer service is some of the best in the business.

                                      Oh, and regardless of what people may believe, Geoff is taunting the world with a giant erect phallus at every opportunity he gets. I think the Amazon logo and his rocket are his little billionaires joke! Just waiting for Musk to come out with the Tesla Model D…

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