On Mon, 29 Dec 2003 23:17:29 +0000, tarquinlinbin
wrote:



You pays your money you take your choice. The way people bleat on here
about BG you;d think they were the worst ever organisation. Beleive
me,they are not. They are just an easy target for people to shoot
down.

True, but it's not the issue as I see it.

They are certainly trading on their market position and inertia of
people to change - they seem a "safe bet".

They advertise their service products based on this perception and
even use the notion of being a "paramedic organisation" i.e. an
emergency service in their TV advertising. OK, so they have a brief
on-screen flash mentioning "terms and conditions", but it is virtually
illegible and only up for a few seconds.

This might comply with the letter of the law but the notion that they
are providing anything close to an emergency service under central
heating contracts is misleading. They are not.

Even on their web site they talk about a 24x7x365 priority customer
help line. Call centre. Big deal. Still does not say when an
engineer will visit.

They also have the audacity to prioritise customers with some kind of
public service ethic. This is patently wrong. All customers should
be treated equally and their contracts should stipulate a maximum call
out time and a time to fix. Sorry to be hard about it, but I'm not
interested in hearing that some of their fitters are off sick or are
busy fixing old ladies gas fires. Yes, these things are important,
but they should be able to provide a good level of service for *all*
customers on the same contract.

I wouldn't even mind seeing different pricing levels for different
response times - then I could choose. Failing that, they should
refund part or all of the contract value if they fail to meet time
performance criteria.

All I ever ask a supplier or provider of a product or service to do is
what they say they are going to do. More is nice, but anything less
is not acceptable. With their promotion of their central heating
contracts, coupled with what happens in practice, they may be doing
what they say they will do in the small print, which is basically
nothing other than "best efforts", but they are selling something
more. My issue with them is the gap between what is implied and
what is delivered.

I don't feel that this should go unchallenged which is why I have
raised the issue with the ASA and with Ofcom.


..andy

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