SASOL, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line.
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE BRITISH GAS CUSTOMER RELATIONS TEAM
2 NOVEMBER 2020
Thank you for your response to my complaint last month.
For the benefit of new readers, I complained about shortcomings in the establishment of a joint electricity and gas account which required me to spend 10 to 15 minutes unsuccessfully and eventually 45 minutes successfully waiting for my phone call to be answered. I would not have needed to phone British Gas at all, but for shortcomings in the on-line service which allowed me access to the electricity account but required me to phone to initiate the gas one.
I asked you not to blame the Covid pandemic for these shortcomings, but you spent some 35% of the words in the substantive part of your response doing just that. I did not complain about the delay in commencing the gas service, as I am aware that you were one of two suppliers involved. But you spent some 30% of the words in your substantive response implying that Opus might be to blame. (The previous supplier was Octopus).
To be clear, only British Gas is to blame for:
- the fact that the on-line system worked for the electricity account on commencement but not for the gas account;
- providing no means for me to initiate on-line activity for that gas account – there was simply a clear message on the screen telling me to call a particular phone number;
- such dire staffing on that phone line, I waited an hour before speaking with someone.
The reason I didn’t want you to blame Covid is because I KNOW that British Gas can staff telephone lines adequately at the moment. The sales team responded to my calls very rapidly. British Gas has chosen not to staff adequately the customer services phone. I strongly suspect that the dire service level I experienced is regular fare for your poorer and more vulnerable customers, who might lack the literacy or IT skills to use the on-line systems and webchats (if/when available, which in my case, you realise, they were not).
You end the substantive part of your response with a delicious question:
“In terms of complaint resolution, other than apologies, could I ask what are you requesting?“
I find this question hard to answer. Perhaps some of my friends and contacts have ideas, which is one of the reasons I am publishing this letter openly. If I get any great ideas from my personal network, I shall pass them on to you.
But I suspect that your question is a veiled way of asking “how much compensation do you need to go away and not come back?” I shall leave the answer to that question to you. I spent an unnecessary hour just waiting for you to answer the phone and I have spent a further 90 minutes or so actually getting my problem resolved and writing to you.
At minimum wages levels that equates to £21.80. At my commercial charge out rate it equates to £1,000. Somewhere between those two figures feels right to me.
Whatever you decide to provide as compensation to Buffalo Woodfield Limited, I pledge personally to donate that sum to FoodCycle, the charity which my wife and I are supporting through the pandemic by doing food drops to the needy. My friends and contacts will eagerly await the donation figure.
I genuinely want British Gas as a supplier to look after poorer and more vulnerable customers properly. You are a large organisation which can make bigger and bolder choices than small companies like mine and individuals like me. Currently, in the matter of customer service, you are making bad customer care choices. Do better.
With best wishes
Ian Harris, Director, Buffalo Woodfield Limited. Complaint Reference number: 5022907658.
Postscript
Seventy minutes after sending the above complaint (and posting it on Facebook & Ogblog) I received correspondence offering £200 as a goodwill gesture.
…and for lovers of Facebook chat about such matters, here is my Facebook posting of the above repleast with comments from friends and family.