Teahot

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?