Elliott Rodgers

So that’s it finished with (*fingers crossed*).. After almost six months, eight different meters, eleven meter cards, two topup card readers, countless failed top ups, lots of phone calls and emails and lets not forget several angry ranty blog posts and a novel solution to the British Gas IE9 topup problem (which as of today has had 4,500+ page views!)…

No more PAYG meter from British Gas… fitted by a very polite, british gas engineer who turned up early.

To celebrate I think I’ll enjoy a nice, relaxing, steaming hot bath.

Just when I thought I’d seen the end of the British Gas PAYG farce – today’s engineer has failed to turn up.

No phone call about running late, no phone call from the engineer… Sheppie and I have to be somewhere this afternoon, so even if I wanted to wait around for the engineer if and when he turns up – I can’t. If this was the plot of a TV Show they’d say it was to far fetched, unrealistic and no company really give this bad customer service…. well apparently they can. I’m begining to believe that British Gas realise they have totally f****d up their customer service and decided that it doesn’t matter if they get any worse.

Update they are due on Friday.

After a British Gas manager failed to ring me last night without an explanation.

I had a “heated discussion” with a British Gas manager and it’s been decided that the PAYG meter is disappearing. I’ve had a new temporary meter (number 5!) and Friday morning I’m going back to a “normal meter”.

In the interests of fair play, open, honesty, full disclosure and all that today’s manager (Neil) was very helpful.

Guess what after weeks (literally weeks) of waiting for British Gas to sort out a new payment card for my gas meter and actually post it to me… I got my card on Saturday.. and it worked!

Four days later and the meter has had a hissy fit… all it will display is “Please wait…” and bleeps every 30 seconds. As it’s late and I’m tired I’m not going to ring them now. Hopefully (pfffft who am I kidding?) it will realise it’s having a hissy fit eventually and shut up.

Here’s quick run down on where we have been before…

Three previous meters, ten gas cards (excluding the current working one), countless phone calls, several emails, two failed engineer appointments, two blatantly FOS lying telephone operators and one very irate customer….

Given everything that has happened so far you would think someone, somewhere in British Gas would decide something along the lines of “We really need to make sure this appointment with Mr Rodgers happens correctly or he is going to be really f****d off if we balls it up again. “

Seriously you really wouldn’t think they would want to fail again?

They failed. Appointment slot was 1pm – 5pm. According to one member of staff on the phone, my apoointment was sent to the engineer at 3pm and he is on his way to my flat (on a seperate note why wasn’t the engineer told earlier about the appointment? Why do they expect customers to wait in their homes when an engineer hasn’t even been told about the job?!

1735: While typing this post I had another call from a different member of staff who says the engineer is coming from home and lives in the HP area (an absolutely massive area) and is on his way… She is calling me back with an ETA….
1845 No call back and no sign of an engineer…
1910 Engineer has finally arrived, seems polite and nice enough.
1920 In goes meter number THREE, I will be getting a new card soon – card number EIGHT! Engineer has just told me that he was told about this job half an hour ago! So that’s totally different from either of the women who spoke to me on the phone!!