The British Gas Years (reprise)

So it's happened to us all... your boiler breaks down, your service supplier is inefficient, you have an intermittent fault, blahblahblah.

Back in 2002, I had some serious hassle (referred to as The British Gas Years.

Then, in 2004/5, I had some similar problems, which in my mind I wrote about extensively, but my archive tells me not.

In the end, I had the mobile phone number for Paul F*******, the British Gas area manager for North London, who lit a few tapers under people's behinds and got it fixed.

In desperation, I called him this morning. No surprise that he's still not in the same job, but he's still with British Gas (moved even higher up the foodchain) and was charming and lovely and got the new area manager to call me back within an hour.

So I've had my fourth engineer visit this morning - finally, at 11.15, after waiting since 8am) and they need more parts. But New Area Manager (NAM) has (a) left me his mobile no, (b) promised that a senior enginner will attend tomorrow morning, and (c) promised that I can get seen at 8.30 after they collect the parts from the Post Office (who knew, they used the Post Office for deliveries).

So, the moral of the tale? Always work down, not up, in a customer service sense.

My husband has just asked me if I'd like to phone his manager's manager's manager (who I think must run the whole shebang) to complain about him, but I don't have any complaints:)