An Indian call centre is currently badgering my wife to pay an outstanding account by card.
The account relates to an empty flat with a sale in progress. The amount claimed does not correspond either to the estimated bill or the meter reading given to BG.
My advice to her is to insist on a paper bill based on the actual meter reading and not to pay by card. We are now getting one or more calls a day.
Do BG have a call centre in India?
Unfortunately she can't remember if she actually gave them her account number or if they already knew it.
"I'm sorry, for reasons of data protection I am unable to discuss financial matters via third world call centres, please instruct the originating party to contact me by post. Further calls will be treated as acts of criminal harassment which will result in you receiving a jolly good whipping."
I hate indian call centres. Note I did not say "foreign". The accent of the staff is invariably hard to follow IME. Why companies still go down that route is beyond me.
Talking of which I need to give a certain large software company a blasting. Got Enterprise Support (which costs a lot of dosh). So I am less than happy about talking with people on the end of a poor quality voip line with heavy accents to boot so I have to ask for everything to be repeated 2-3 times. Especially when they c*ck up and tell me my version of the software was end-of-lifed last spring! When in fact our contract gets support until the end of the contract in 18 months (no it's not MS).
Dell EQLLogic (disk arrays, SANs and stuff) OTOH are a joy to call. Get straight through to a helpful chappy in Eire who also has an accent - but not heavy and I have no trouble with them. And when they've figured the problem, you get a call back from a 2nd or 3rd line engineering person who might be irish, or east european - but in all cases, despite accent, all have excellent and very clear english.
I know indian people in real life who have very minimal accents, so I really don't know where they get the staff for these sodding call centres from.
Had contact with a Sky call centre in (I assume) Scotland recently. The accent was so thick that I began to wish, after several requests for the comments to be repeated) it was an Indian (or other far eastern) call centre
I have had no problems getting BG to correspond with me via email and I have had a few disputes with them over the years. Contact them through their official complaints procedure (email) the complaints are monitored and with the utility companies receiving a lot of adverse publicity they are quick to respond.
As others have said. NEVER EVER give payment details over the phone to anyone that calls YOU.
Only pay the amount shown on the paper bill or get a copy sent out and pay by calling the number on the bill. Alternatively tell the call centre it has already been paid by direct debit etc to British Gas.
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