British (Laughing) Gas

...every time I come to Liverpool, it's the same story...

The basic situation is this:

I live in Deepest Bavaria - my mother's house is in Liverpool - she died in 2005 - I come over every few months to see things are ok ...

Because of this I get all the utility bills online ... should get ...

I opened an online account with British Gas so that they would send me the bills by email and I could pay them by online banking.

Simple!

But it seems that British Gas suffers from some sort of corporate Alzheimer's; every time I get to the house there is a series of frantic letters from British Gas ... a final final demand for a bill; they want to break in to check the boiler; they want to break in to make a reading ... and now they want to break in to take out the electricity meter ...

So every time I have to go through the intensely irritating telephonic jumping through hoops to get to speak to someone about whatever panic they now have ...

"Thank you for calling British Gas - your call is very important to us - if you are calling about blah press blah, if you have a blah, press blah ..."

I mean if the call really is important to them then how about having a REAL person there answering the phone?

And the main problem with the options is that there is never one that says, "if you live in Deepest Bavaria and keep getting a load of stupid letters from British Gas, please press blah ..."

What you need is a hacker who gets into the system and adds a few options:

"if you would like a bucket of water to be thrown at the next available operator, press blah - if you would to crash the next available operator's computer, press blah - if you would like someone here to be given a mild electric shock through the phone, press blah ..."

On second thoughts, cancel that last one ... I would end up with a series of letters asking for me to pay for the shock ...