Champions

British Gas have smashed their own Appalling Service World Record in a dazzling display of incompetence the like of which has not been seen since Thomas Farriner, a Pudding Lane baker in 1666 said, "Oh I'll just pop out for 5 minutes; I'm sure those buns will be fine". Many commentators felt that their engineer breaking the boiler he was meant to be servicing had raised uselessness to a level unobtainable by the competition. Surely the only people who could raise their game to challenge that would be British Gas themselves. And so they did. Having left us without heating and scarcely any hot water for 3 weeks we finally managed to get them to commit to today as the day that they would fix that which they broke. We checked yesterday that the parts were in and an engineer was primed and ready to install them. We were informed that this was indeed the case.

So this morning Tinseltroos waited in the flat from 8 a.m. until 10.30 and I took over after that. We were solemnly promised an engineer would arrive between 8 and 1 o'clock. Surely a new world record couldn't be in the offing, could it? Oh it could. And how. The non-arrival of the engineer at any point during the 5 hour window had me reaching for the telephone to inform a British Gas sales rep of their achievement. He was surprised no-one had called he told me, it was all there in black and white. This was true I agreed although it didn't mitigate his actual non-appearance. The best he could do for me, he said in solemn tones, was to get the "parts department" to call me "immediately" to arrange another appointment. With this he hung up. Did the parts department call? Of course not. I suspect they don't actually exist. By this time I was back in work and Tinseltroos 'phoned them again and shouted at them until they agreed to send an engineer on Friday, "between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m.".

Why do I have this strange prickle of déjà vu creeping down my spine?