Bored? Fed up with your friends? Looking for an existential experience? I’ve got the ideal suggestion: get in a British Gas phone queue.
The automated service is packed with inter-active telephone keypad action, fab music and fascinating advice. All I wanted to do was solve the mystery of my billing payment and thrown in – for free! – was a host of energy saving tips, all provided against the aural tapestries of Coldplay on panpipes.
Before I continue to extol the wonders of British Gas customer service, I need to take you back a step.
I had paid our quarterly bill over the phone a fortnight earlier using a debit card. Staggeringly, the total was for £244.74. Surely this couldn’t be right. We only live in a two-bedroom terrace. The house didn’t cost that much to build.
Still, I paid up and kept checking my online bank statements, becoming increasingly puzzled why the £244.74 had not been taken from my account. Two weeks passed. Should I keep quiet? Maybe some other poor sod had had the money taken from his account by mistake and I would get away scot-free.
Then I reasoned it never works like that, not with me. I would get found out, be charged interest and get sued. My mug-shot would be on Crimewatch. So I called British Gas, prepared to confess and waited in the automated queue.
That’s when the useful recorded advice – and Coldplay on panpipes – started:
"Your fridge freezer is the hardest working appliance in your home – so don’t leave the door open."
Brilliant! I’d always wondered why the kitchen was so cold and the kids suffered frostbite in the height of summer.
Next up was: "It’s a good idea to make sure outside flues aren’t blocked with climbing plants." There were tips on bleeding radiators, lagging hot water pipes and cooking food in a saucepan ("Make sure the flame only covers the bottom of the pan. If the flame goes up the side of the pan, you’re wasting energy.")
After 11 minutes listening to an Aztec tribe’s rendition of Speed of Sound I was connected to Emily. I told her about the problem with the payment. I’d kind of paid – but I hadn’t really.
"We’ve got it," said Emily.
"Well, if you’ve got it, it’s not my money," I said. "The money’s not gone out of my bank account."
Emily was puzzled. She gave me an authorisation code and suggested I called my bank.
I called Lloyds TSB. Ten minutes in another phone queue before being patched through. No, I was correct, said the Honor Blackman sound-alike. The money hadn’t gone out of my account.
I wondered if Lloyds could have made the payment on my behalf and not taken the funds from my account as a goodwill gesture for my long-serving custom? "I don’t think we’re in the habit of doing that, Mr McComb," replied the oddly seductive voice.
I called British Gas again. Back in the queue. Speed of Sound again, without a trace of irony. As I listened to advice about fitting a carbon monoxide detector, my wife informed me I had walked dog turds into the house.
Finally I got through to Gwen. She was stumped, too, but pledged to investigate.
Several hours later, Gwen left a message on my mobile phone. Yes, there had been a cock-up. However, the payment would come out of my account – in the next 14 days.
The frightening bit is this: my billing fiasco took place after British Gas installed a new system in the wake of a doubling of complaints.