grumpyf1

One of these sofa, please - do you do it in "heavily delayed"? “The customer is always right”, the saying goes.  That may well be true, but it would appear some well-known companies are unable to remember that. I’ve encountered two fine examples of big names getting it badly wrong recently, both of which left me considering switching allegiance and frothing at the mouth. First to get their logo emblazoned boldly onto this particular wall of shame is energy supplier NPower. They’ve struggled badly in the past with customer service, regularly appearing way down the rankings when it comes to keeping their punters happy. I still have decidedly un-fond memories of calling them up to change tariffs, then repeatedly having to call them months later as they still hadn’t switched my account and were charging me a higher rate. My current beef revolves around the amount I pay each month for the honour of receiving gas and electricity from them. I have an old house, which g...

That’s it. I’m declaring war on companies not bothering to show up during the agreed timeslot. I got up early on Saturday. I was in the shower by 0715 on my day off, to make sure I was done, dressed and had consumed my cereals and toast in time for the start of the 0800 timeslot. Following a letter in the post, an appointment had been booked weeks previously for a representative to come round and check that our gas meter was safe. Nothing to worry about, routine check, it is very important that you book it in NOW, we have the right to forcibly enter your house etc. Despite previous experience suggesting that from the point my doorbell rang to me saying “Thanks, bye” would be well under five minutes, a 4 hour slot was allocated. So, on about the nicest day of the year so far, I was trapped in my own home, waiting for a visitor whose stay would be so brief, you’d still be on the “Galileo!” bit of Bohemian Rhapsody (if you had the strange habit of timing engineers using the ‘Que...