What month is it in support land?
Ah good old British Gas, they sent a letter telling us they were fitting a remote-read metre while I was on break some time ago making me run around to make sure someone knew what was going on and would be in; then promptly fitted it to another unit.
So now we get the second bill utilising this wonderful technology and woah that can't be right; one phone call and one hold queue later
"Hi British Gas can I take your name"
"Yeah it's [name]"
"And how can I help"
"Uh account number?"
"Yeah?"
"[account number]"
"So how can I help?"
"To start you've got the site name wrong [they're addressing it to the building they said they were fitting the metre too] it should be [site]"
"Okay I need to go through the security questions to enter this screen - What's your telephone number?"
"[number, which is public]"
"Postcode"
"[postcode, which is public and on the invoice]"
"and how you normally pay?"
"[pay, which if Direct Debit is also on the invoice]"
"Okay I've changed that anything else?"
"Yeah can you bring up the latest invoice dated [date], do you want the number?"
"No I 've got it in front of me here"
"Okay can you see where we've been charged [units] from the 2nd August to the 28th?"
"Yeah"
"For Dec and Jan Weekday off-peak rate?"
"Uh-huh"
"It's August!"
"Yeah... what's the problem?"
"For the Dec and Jan rate"
"...?"
"It's August!"
"... let me put you on hold"
One lengthy hold later I'm told to ignore that invoice and that they'll be looking into it.
2 comments:
It could be worse! I still remember the plight of the women who one day received her electricity bill for the last 6 months usage.
For £60,000.
You may sit there and go "oh, yeah, that's obviously a glitch". But think about this poor women, opening a letter and seeing a number like that. And knowing that if she can't make them understand it's a mistake, they might actually make her pay that amount! Damn frightening…
Oh hell yes it could have been worse for us, for her she could have been on Direct Debit and they'd taken the money out already.
I just have to wonder how much money some companies make out of mistakes like this from people who don't happen to notice, if it wasn't for the striking figures I might not have noticed.
Post a Comment