How British Gas avoid their legal obligations to refund for bad service Wednesday 25th February, 2009.
Posted by teahot in Complaint.1 comment so far
After listening to my Mother’s tale of woe in spending a fortnight endlessly waiting in for British Gas workmen to fit an electric meter, I was very interested in a recent BBC Watchdog programme where they explained that utility companies have a legal obligation to compensate customers for when they fail to attend a booked appointment. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/watchdog.
I found a customer service number for British Gas (using saynoto0870.com for a geographic number) and gave the basic information to my Mother to pursue. She had an annoying phonecall where customer services were unhelpful and defensive but eventually by quoting the law (The Electricity (Standards of Performance) Regulations 2005 and The Gas (Standards of Performance) Regulations 2002) they eventually offered legally defined compensation of £20 per visit. As they had managed to fail to arrive for 4 visits, this amounted to £80.
Doesn’t it seem sneaky that they don’t automatically offer customers compensation but only do this for customers that threaten to use legislation?
Why isn’t Barak Obama black? Saturday 21st February, 2009.
Posted by teahot in Quibble.add a comment
Over the last few months I have grown increasingly irritated by UK journalists endlessly repeating the American phraseology of “African American” when describing President Obama. The man was born in Hawaii, not Africa, this makes him Hawaiian . Obama himself said “I’ve got relatives who look like Margaret Thatcher” and comes from a rich mixed ancestry.
Their problem seems to be that they want to describe the colour of his skin and don’t want to say he is black or (even worse?) coloured as, though technically more accurate, this might cause offence and so use this inaccurate political description that in itself could cause offence by ignoring his true ancestry.
My ancestors were Dutch, Russian, German, Goan, British and Irish but I would be described as English as I was born in England, I see no reason the same logic should not be applied to describe Obama.
