British Gas supply the gas to our lovely new flat (where by ‘lovely’ I mean ‘building site’), via a pre-payment meter. This would be all well and good, except that tying a meter to a new pre-payment card so that a new customer (i.e. us) can use it requires a physical meter reset to be performed by an engineer. And not any old engineer, no. In fact, not even a British Gas engineer. Gas meters require a National Grid (née Transco) engineer to reset them. National Grid is the third-party supplier of gas infrastructure to British Gas.
So far, we’ve booked 4 appointments, through British Gas, for an engineer to come and reset our meter. On three of those occasions the engineer has simply failed to show. On the last occasion, British Gas told us that the visit was booked at one time, but actually booked it at a different time, so we received a confused phone call from an engineer who was several hours early. (We were out, incidentally, hurrying round to get stuff done so we could spend the entire afternoon and early evening waiting for an engineer.)
Most irritating is that, several times now, the British Gas staff claim that this isn’t their fault. There’s nothing they can do except book another appointment in a very vague time slot.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand the problem of dealing with problematic third parties as much as the next employee of a large corporation, but there’s no way I’d ever tell a customer that the behaviour of a third party supplier the customer never dealt with directly was not my fault.
If the third party fails to do what they said, and that causes problems for the service I provide to a customer then that’s my fault. Saying it’s not my fault is like saying that the customer’s service is provided on a best-efforts basis, but we don’t really care if it goes wrong, and you’ll still have to pay us. It’s also like claiming that my relationship with the supplier is beyond my control: that I am incapable of managing that relationship properly.
British Gas claim that they cannot book visits from engineers into anything more accurate than a half-day slot. Since I have now booked a day and a half of holiday in order to wait for an engineer who has never shown, this is no longer acceptable: If I’m going to wait, it’s going to be for fifteen or thirty minutes. They’ve had their shot at coming at a time convenient for them.
Since the first-line customer support people claim that they cannot do any better, I have asked to speak to their supervisor. They claim that their supervisor cannot take phone calls, but will call me back (within four hours). This has happened three times now, and I have never been called back.
When we moved in, the meter was already in emergency credit, the special spare £10 of credit for situations exactly like ours. There is now £0.40 left. We have already had to shut off the central heating and I expect the gas supply to cut out today or tomorrow morning.
When I demanded to speak to a supervisor today, saying that I wouldn’t accept a call back and would continue to speak to the customer service person until I did, the customer service person went away (to talk to their supervisor, perhaps?) and told me that they could not do that, and then hung up the phone.
I not sure quite how this qualifies as customer service.
I haven’t been a British Gas customer for several years now, and, if this is how they treat their customers, I doubt I ever will be again. If you’re a customer, I’d think about switching. After all, if you’re left without heating you probably want to deal with a company capable of solving the problem.
Update: Possibly ironic, certainly not funny
A man named Joe Dyer has his signature at the bottom of our British Gas welcome letter, and gave this presentation. Here’s a choice quote:
Some of you may ask what the difference is between ownership and
accountability, and empowerment. It seems like the same thing.
Actually, it is vastly different, because with empowerment comes a
significant amount of accountability, because one cannot hang one’s
hat on “I obeyed this rule and followed that escalation process”. The
ownership and accountability will rest at the point of contact to
deliver the results. We will be talking about that, and it is about
doing the right thing. It is about leveraging knowledge and a deeply
caring culture to execute at the first point of contact, resolve the
customer problem, and deliver the customer value, which, ultimately,
drives the shareholder value.
The single most recurring phrase I’ve heard from British Gas customer service people is that they can’t, either because ‘the system’ won’t let them, or because it’s to do with National Grid, and therefore beyond their control. Way to go, Joe.
Incidentally, there are two phone lines to call if you’re a British Gas customer, one for monthly billed (credit) meters and one for those of us saddled with pre-payment meters. Just as an experiment I called both numbers at the same time (just after 5.30pm this evening) and was answered on the credit meter line in ten minutes, and the pre-payment line in forty minutes. I must say that I’m beginning to feel like a second-class customer.