British Gas

O, the fun I've had this week - laugh? I could cry. Or, more likely, shout. And I would if it would have any effect.

My gas boiler broke down last weekend, so I've had no heating or hot water since then. I rang British Gas to get someone to come out and fix it under one of their "customer care" contracts that costs close to £400 per year. Because last weekend was so cold then lots of people are switching on their heating and finding problems, so the earliest they can arrange an appointment is Wednesday between 12.00 - 6.00pm. OK, I will sit at home and wait for the engineer for 6 hours. He eventually turned up at 7.25pm but didn't have the right parts so would have to order them and arrange another appointment.

The second appointment was for Friday between 8.00am - 12.00pm and the engineer turned up at 11.45am. With the wrong part. Ooops. So he arranges another appointment for Saturday morning, this time between 10.00am - 12.oopm. The engineer turns up at 10.15am (well done for that) and has the right parts but can't do any work because there's no gas supply ...

Friday saw lots of activity in my street and outside my house as another bit of the gas supply industry dug up the road, shouted and swore a lot, a couple of them played keepy-upsey with a football in my drive way and then damaged the main gas supply pipe for the whole road. Ooops again. They were still trying to repair it at 1.00am last night (I know because the generator to provide light was incredibly loud and heard quite clearly in my flat). I had no idea whether it's fixed or not this morning but it turned out that the supply pipe was fixed but gas has been switched off to this house until engineers can turn off and then on all the individual supply pipes in each flat. I am now waiting for this to happen.

I have also rung the "customer care" contract people to arrange for the engineer to come again to fix the boiler and was offered either between 8.00am - 6.00pm on Sunday or on Monday between 8.00am - 12.00pm. Since I'm going out tomorrow afternoon then it'll have to be Monday.

Of course, I haven't itemised all the phone calls I've had to make, how many different departments I've been passed around or the different companies I've spoken to (British Gas charges me for gas used but another company supplies it and another company again seems to do the maintenance... it gets complicated). The engineers all seem nice enough people, and they would be since they're standing in front of you, but the call centre people are irritating rules-is-rules types. As with most things, it's the system that's wrong.

So far, I've spent about 16 hours sitting waiting for the gas man to arrive or sitting here while he's done some (incomplete) work and I now have to wait around over the afternoon for another engineer to come and switch the gas back on. Then, potentially, another 4-5 hours on Monday. And can I claim any compensation for this or claim loss of earnings? Of course not!

The "customer care" people are almost eager to tell you the address to write to for complaints which makes me assume they're so used to this that it's water off a duck's back and any complaint will get a bog standard reply. I can't simply cancel my contract with them since I'll be charged the full amount (it's in the small print) so it's lose-lose all the way for me.

Update: 4.05pm and I now have gas again. That's taken 6 hours from first talking to the engineers about reconnecting the gas supply to the house. Now I just need to wait for Monday to have the boiler fixed and I'll be back in business.