There was a thread here a couple of months back on how unbelievably stupid and bureaucratic the service industries have become since deregulation... I've been getting a real bellyful of this over the past couple of months while trying (against all the odds) to get water, electricity and gas delivered to my property. Water's reasonably simple (just outrageously expensive - 1100 quid to get a pipe 5 feet from the water main to the outside wall of my terraced house) but electric and gas...? Holy Moses. With electricity I've been all round the houses trying to get to speak to the right person, whoe doesn't deny all knowledge and tries to pass me on to the next company with their multilayered dial-in menus, but think I've finally got it sussed.
But gas...? I have Transco coming in next Thursday to install it (after about 8 weeks lag time). I had told Transco that I had selected Scottish Power as my supplier, so just phoned SP to check that all was well. They knew nothing about me. "Oh Transco should have notified us" "OK, well I'm notifying you now!" "No it has to be Transco".
I phone Transco. "Oh no sir, it's up to you to notify your supplier direct, we don't do that. They need to fit the meter too."
Eh?
So, back on to Scottish Power "Ah well yes you see we actually contract out meter installations and you'd need to speak to them" "Who to?" "Transco"
Of course, obvious really, innit?
Back on to Transco. Apparently a different department deals with that, they fit meters separately. They'll be coming 2 weeks later to fit a meter (so that's another day gone sitting around waiting for them).
Fantastic, eh?
David