IT’S almost six weeks since I had a rant in this column about the utility companies after we were stung with an erroneous direct debit increase on our fuel bill of a jaw-dropping 102 per cent.

At that time we’d spent the grand total of 5 hours and 14 minutes on the phone to npower trying to resolve our complaint against them. And guess what? It’s now up to ten hours and counting….

But a straw poll of friends, neighbours and acquaintances shows that a mere ten hours is nothing. One former colleague spent two years – yes, really - battling with the fuel giant who insisted her mother owed money for the ‘leccy even though she was dead.

Another spent nine months trying to get back £50 she’d been over-charged and only finally won the day because she rang the monolithic organisation every day for two weeks until someone, somewhere admitted they’d made a mistake.

Our foray into the labyrinthine virtual corridors of the fuel company has exposed their totally inadequate and insulting approach to customer service. Their chief executive Paul Massara has no clue what people paying the earth to keep the lights on actually feel at the hands of his business because he doesn’t talk to customers nor, it seems, does his customer services director.

Minions down the npower food chain actually tell that to customers who, frustrated at being thwarted at every turn to get a modicum of common sense out of the organisation, in sheer desperation ask to be put through to the bosses.

We’ve discovered in the last few weeks that shockingly, npower apparently has no quality or competence management systems. They train up customer service staff to resolve disputes and then let them loose on an unsuspecting public to call customers, write emails and letters and generally sort out things that have gone wrong. They’ve certainly got their work cut out….

But the company doesn’t appear to have any checks and balances for maintaining base standards, never mind continuing improvement. They appear not to review training or have a mechanism to check continuing competence and only look at an individual’s performance if they receive a complaint about how they’ve dealt with a customer. Talk about closing the stable door after the horse has legged it…

No wonder npower receives more complaints than any other utility company. It’s high time that Mr Massara and his executive team got out of their offices, rolled up their sleeves, got down onto the customer service call centre shop floor and started talking to the people who pay through the nose for fuel to furnish their vast salaries and bonuses. That’s you and me. And by god, would we tell them a thing or two….

 

WHAT was that line legendary football commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme famously came out with in the dying moments of the 1966 England World Cup Final when Geoff Hurst put the irrefutably decisive ball into the back of the net in the dying extra-time moments of the match?

“They think it’s all over – it is now!” Just like it was 48 years later in Brazil, albeit in a different sort of way.

And even a hardened non-footy fan like me did experience a smidgeon of regret when the England team came down the steps of their airplane on their return home to be greeted by no-one apart from a little group of school children peering through a perimeter fence.

Not that I know anything of course, but if we stopped relying so heavily on the skills of foreign players to provide the premier league teams with their winning formulae then maybe we could give home grown talent a better chance and find that winning streak again. Just saying….

 

AND finally, just to be clear – the picture in my last column, which showed a disgustingly messy student bedroom, was not my son’s. As I was saying last week he might not be the best at packing up a year of university life to move from one set of digs to another but he’s certainly not the type who looks like he lives in the student equivalent of a corporation refuse tip. Well not much, anyway… (Will that do as an apology, son?)