We’ve all experienced terrible customer service. Since Covid, it has got worse, with the message ‘we’re dealing with unexpectedly high call volumes at this time’ on repeat for the past four years.

This week it’s been British Gas and Evri who have made my blood boil.

My son saved up for a vintage jumper from the 90s (I don’t know what’s going on with Gen Z I really don’t, my teenagers’ wardrobe is exactly the same as mine circa 1996). He ordered it from Depop to be delivered by Evri. The order was late, then it was later, then it was lost. Contacting customer service and speaking to a human was impossible. I spent hours lost in an endless loop of ‘what’s your tracking number?’ follows by ‘that order has been delivered’ before returning to ‘what’s your tracking number?’. Me screaming down the phone, or typing furiously in capitals ‘IT HASN’T BEEN DELIVERED!’ had no effect.

The day after the parcel was supposed to be delivered, Son gets a text saying ‘sorry your Evri parcel has been delayed, there’s a problem with the packaging. Please click this link.’

Son clicks the link and arrives at what seems to be an official Evri site. He’s told he needs to send in his address and pay 24p for the parcel to be rewrapped. Luckily he was mildly suspicious, so used his pocket money card (which only had 50p on it) then thought nothing more of it and waited for his parcel.

24 hours later I received this!!

Within a day someone in MALAYSIA is using Son’s pocket money card to try and spend over £60.

When I finally got through to Evri (who managed to lose two of our parcels in a week) they said it was ‘very challenging as parcels go from warehouse to warehouse and they can obviously get lost.’ I pointed out that was their job, and if they did their job properly and delivered their parcels on time, then scammers wouldn’t be able to get away with their phishing texts about missing parcels.

Later I spent waaaaaay more time than I would have liked on the phone and webchat to British Gas to find out why they were (massively over) estimating my bills when I had a smart meter. After two days of persistent hassling, I finally managed to wrangle from them that my smart meter was broken and had been since November. They didn’t think to tell me or send anyone out to fix it.

When I asked when it would be fixed I was disconnected. This happened twice. After days of not getting anywhere, I resorted to Twitter to express my frustration. Now I have done this often in the past,contacting Amazon, car hire companies, Trip.com, Uber support, and so on to raise an issue. Sometimes you get a quicker response by raising a complaint publically. This time was no different. Or so I thought …

‘Please get back to me British Gas!’ I tweeted. ‘I can’t get through to anyone and keep getting emails saying my complaint has been resolved WHEN IT HASN’T BEEN RESOLVED.’

British Gas responded … ‘So sorry you’ve had this trouble,’ it read. ‘Please DM us your number and we’ll be in touch.’

This is not unusual, and many other companies have done this in the past. So I sent my number privately.

That afternoon I get a phone call from British Gas. The nice man listened sympathetically as I listed my complaints and apologised for the poor service I’d received. He said they would send someone out ‘the very next day’ to repair the smart meter, and would arrange compensation for the time and energy I had wasted trying to get their error resolved.

It was so nice to be listened to! He was patient, kind, and empathetic – balm to my wounded soul.

But…

HE WAS A SCAMMER!

As he was talking, I thought, ‘he’s being very nice … Customer service isn’t that nice …’ With a sinking heart, I checked the number he was calling from. Kenya? That can’t be right?

While he continued to talk, asking for my latest meter readings and so on, unease began to grow. I checked my Twitter. I’d been contacted by BRIITISH GAS not BRITISH GAS!

Yes. It was a scam. And I was about ten seconds away from him plundering everything from my bank account.

When I challenged him by saying, ‘You’re not from British Gas are you?’ he hung up. And I had to get a new bank card and change all my passwords. By the way, the real British Gas still hasn’t responded to my complaint or tweet. The scammer was MORE EFFICIENT THAN BRITISH GAS!

But this is the thing.

If I could get through to EVRI/British Gas customer service and speak to a human, none of this would have happened. These companies think it’s OK that their customers are spending hours and hours of their time trying to get through. Customers who have jobs to do. Customers who are being driven mad by bots sending them into spirals of endless loops where they don’t get anywhere and nothing is resolved.

I have lost count of the number of times I have yelled at the phone ‘IF I COULD RESOLVE THIS ON YOUR WEB PAGE I WOULDN’T HAVE TO PHONE!’

We shouldn’t have to put up with this. And, more seriously, scammers are moving in and taking advantage of incompetent and non-existent customer service. If I hadn’t had such poor service from British Gas I wouldn’t have had a scammer preying on my frustration. If Evri had done their job and delivered Son’s parcel, he wouldn’t have fallen for the text message apologising for the missing delivery that led to him having his card cloned.

Do these companies not want us to get issues resolved? Why do they make it so hard to speak to a human? Why don’t they have enough staff to ensure you DON’T have to wait for over 30 minutes to get through? Is this simply cutting costs? British Gas published HUGE, HUGE profits last year – why don’t they use that money to get more people into the customer services teams?

The trouble is they have us over a barrel. What other options are there? You order something and you have no choice over who delivers. We need to have that option as I never want to use Evri ever (see what I did there) again.

So rise up, people! Don’t accept terrible customer service from faceless bots and infuriating web chats. Let’s march upon the call centres and tear out the phone lines. Boycott companies who don’t invest in helping their customers. Write to your MPs!

But most importantly of all, NEVER trust someone who says they are from EVRI/BT/O2 if they sound helpful and offer compensation and apologise without prompting. Chance are they are a SCAMMER! Be careful out there.