Andy Richardson: Left out in the cold while trying to sort out utility bills

Overwhelming demand seemed to be the default and unless you were prepared to wait 45 minutes to ask a question that required a 30-second response time, you could sling your hook. There was no way of connecting to a human being, much less to one willing or able to help.

So I figured I’d sort out the electricity. Bills are rising – I know, tell me about it – and when faced with the prospect of a bill that now equates to half the cost of a brand new, showroom-fresh car, I thought they’d be able to help.

So I called my energy supplier and met the same automated service that had been at the bank.

Perhaps the automated service was really the same person, with a voicebox. I’d have to wait at least 20 minutes to get an eight-digit reference number that somebody else needed.

So, between them, I needed to waste an hour to get two simple questions answered that they wouldn’t answer via email – security concerns, yeah, right – or via their automated chat-bot services. Chat-bot services are on the rise, though calling those useless would be to do a disservice to useless.

What is it with utilities and online retailers and banks and those who supposedly offer professional services? Where has everyone gone?

During the pandemic, there was a respectable reason for the wait. Staff were at home, calls were being diverted, we were intruding into someone’s living room, or home office, and we were in the throes of the still-relevant ‘Be More Kind’ thing, where we were understanding and tolerant and accepting.

But the average gross margin for utility companies in the first quarter of 2021 was big enough to make your calculator explode and numbers published by Ofgem, the UK energy regulator, show that the Big Six energy companies made more than £3 billion in profit in 2020.

None of that, presumably, went to ‘overwhelming demand’ phoneline, which has kept me on hold throughout this multi-tasking business of writing a column and knowing that my energy supplier is never going to answer.

And, supposing it does, it would have a reason not to give me the information I required.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the utility companies’ three billion big ones is needed to buy new water coolers, install a pool table in the games room or buy a new bot to man the useless chat service. Or maybe they’re just having a giraffe. Because while the rest of us are supposed to answer the phone/email/text when the bank or utility companies call us, it seems they’re down with a two-minute working week in which under-resourced staff don’t have the time to get things done because there are too many queries and not enough workers.

We’re supposed to be through the pandemic, which means big business can no longer use it as an excuse for being rubbish at providing even a hint of customer service. Though big business appears not to have got that memo. It’s probably lost in the mailroom, which is beneath the room filled with automated phones that tell us about the overwhelming demand.

It’s not just banks and utility companies that fail their customers.

While prices spike for oil and gas, fuel stations display their true colours by variously hiking prices or keeping them low. There must be a reason somewhere – actually, there isn’t – why a local garage can charge £1.74 for diesel on the same day that another garage a short drive away is charging £1.49. I think it’s this. The gaffer is making stacks and stacks of money so he can afford the multi-thousand-pound energy bills charged by companies who won’t pay the wages of sufficient staff to answer their blinkin’ phones.