British Gas - shortchanging the customer?

I've had a British Gas homecare agreement for years. They used to service my boiler every August. In 2006, I got no letter arranging an appointment for this; I rang, eventually, and it was done in November. In 2007 likewise no letter arrived; I rang in January and it has been done today. Not that they serviced it -- today BG call it "an inspection".

The engineer managed to turn off my pilot light and couldn't restart it. This was very bad news, and somewhat annoying. I don't need to have someone come out to disable my system, after all. But then he announced that he would have to call someone else to fix it. "I don't carry parts" he said. "You'll be lucky to get someone today". "You need a technician". When I queried whether the service engineers used to carry parts, he confirmed that they did. "We used to do services in the summer and concentrate on breakdowns in the winter."

Fortunately it was merely being difficult, and restarted after a few attempts and a long wait to reset the thermostat. But I feel swindled. British Gas forced me to take half a day off work. If there was work to be done, that's fine; but to make me wait even longer, possibly a day or so, if they manage to break something?

I want my boiler serviced every year. But in fact they're stretching the window longer each year. And they don't service it, they carry out "an inspection". And then they won't fix any fault they find?

Cunning rascals

After blogging on the Royal Mail scam, whereby they charge you an £8'international handling charge' to receive your parcel if customs decide to levy VAT on it, I thought that I would try complaining. The industry is regulated by PostComm, so I went to their web site. This said:

• Contact Royal Mail
  
• If you get no joy, try Postwatch
  
• Otherwise you can sue (ha ha)

So you cannot, in fact, complain to Postcomm. It looks as if it is just a quango.

Anyhow I complained to Royal Mail who sent me a long canned email suggesting that I complain to HM Revenue and Customs. This, of course, was disingenuous -- it is Royal Mail who impose this charge -- indicating that Royal Mail know full well that they're engaged in a scam.

I then complained to Postwatch. I got back a long canned email from them, which was interesting in that it retailed the Royal Mail line and then added:

"Issues relating to customs and excise is outside Postwatch's remit therefore we cannot become involved in disputes regarding this matter."

In other words, because Royal Mail claim that this is to do with customs, they can charge us what they like?!

Clearly this is a loophole in the law, which Royal Mail have discovered and are abusing for profit. Nasty, nasty stuff.

One other interesting snippet:

"Customers can refuse to pay these duties and charges, in which case the goods will be returned to sender at Royal Mail's expense."

If only we could all do that, and specify that another operator be used.