Life’s a Gas

The saga of British Gas and smart meters continues.

A chara

This feels rather like going to confession, “Forgive me, British Gas, as it has been 3 months since my last complaint.”

My issue is very simple, the smart meters you installed no longer work and you want to replace them.

This is an excellent idea though, to be honest, the electricity smart meter you installed never actually worked and the one subsequent attempt you made to fix it somehow involved cutting off my gas.

But that’s water under the bridge, you want to install replacement meters, which I am sure will work, and I would be very happy for you to install them.

There is just one small issue.

I am currently a cancer patient and presently not really in a position to deal with the replacement of my smart meters.

I was diagnosed 18 months ago and in that time have had one major operation and two subsequent emergency admissions to hospital.

I have informed you of this by email, via your website, web chat, the complaint’s process and even in person. 

Everyone I have dealt with has been a credit to your company. Polite, understanding and keen to help.

And none of them have been unable to resolve the issue.

I know nothing about your internal service architecture but it does seem that nobody has access to an integrated customer view, let alone the ability to update it. So all conversations with yourselves feel like Groundhog Day.

I admire your keenness to replace my smart meters and I very much hope to be able to welcome your expert engineers at a future date to replace my non-working ones. But could we arrange to do it when I am able?

I pay by direct debit, I am in credit and I have obviously been away for parts of the past 18 months so there is unlikely to be a significant financial impact for either of us.

Whilst all the people I have spoken to have been very nice I would just like the issue to be resolved rather than get another phone call. 

I am very happy to have the meters replaced when I am well enough but as it stands I am currently wondering if I should get my solicitor to update my will to include instructions on what to do about British Gas and smart meters. 

UPDATE: British Gas have responded and well…

“Hello Mark O’Neill
Thank you for getting in touch and giving me some time to look into the important issue you raised.
I called today at 13:30 as I would like to know if we can gain permission to have your meters upgraded to smart meters.”

SCREAM!