A frugal life is an easy life!

A typical scenario, I believe, is happening everyday in the UK:

• Customer has a fault with equipment and/or a service
• Customer rings company to report it and have it repaired
• Company promise an engineer will be sent out to correct the fault
• Customer sits in the house all day, which involves loss of earnings or inconvenienced as regards time
• Company engineer does not turn up
• Customer rings up company the next day and gets, "I can only apologise" then company rebooks the appointment
• Customer has another day of lost earnings, time, etc.
• MAYBE, the company turn up to fix the fault, but not always

It is a disgrace that when a customer reports a fault, should the engineer not be able to find a fault or blames (incorrectly or not) other factors, the customer must then pay a "call out fee"

At present, British Telecom charge their customers £99, should an engineer not be able to determine a fault, per visit to a customer's property!
Sky TV fitters charge a call out fee as well.

THIS NEEDS TO BE STOPPED AND STOPPED NOW!

Eon (Yes them again) had a fault with our electricity meter reported.
Despite claims by the company that they do not recover debt from pre payment customers, who have no debt, our meter clearly displays that £1.05 per week is being taken from our pre paid credit, to pay for a debt that doesn't exist.

Yesterday, their "advisor" (I use that term loosely) informed me that this should be cleared off the meter when an engineer visits to correct the emergency credit fault.
"Don't worry sir, once the engineer has fixed the problem, the debt recovery on the meter will be reduced to nil and then we will be in touch as regards a refund for you."

All day we sat in and waited, as time ticked away and passed the 8pm cut off time for repairs. No engineer came.

Today when I rang them, the advisor states, "There was no appointment booked for an engineer to visit your home!"
After checking the account notes, there is nothing on the notes for yesterday's call regarding the £1.05 per week being taken off the meter, or even looked at with a view to a refund being issued.
"An appointment was booked, but this was cancelled by our office and this was relayed back to the advisor who you spoke with and they should have notified you that an engineer would not be calling."

"I can only apologise for this," said the advisor,
"No, I do not want your apology, I want reimbursing for a days earnings that we have lost due to your incompetance!" I replied.

"Sorry sir, we do not offer that!" I hung up in disgust.

How many more people are going to lose money because of companies who fail to turn up when booked to do so?
How many more times must the customer take any losses on the chin, money lost from the family pot?
How many more times are rules/laws only going to benefit companies?
How much longer before customers are at last, be entitled to some financial reimbursement for a company's failings?

Good customer service and equal rights for both parties go hand in hand.
If a customer has to be paid when a company do not turn up at a customer's home to fix a fault, just watch the customer service improve and the number of times a company fail to turn up will drop dramatically, overnight!

I cannot be the only customer that has been left out of pocket because of this?