The early morning calls panicked customers (Picture: Reuters)
British Gas customers have been rudely awoken by a call in the middle of the night asking them for feedback, it’s been revealed.
Citing a ‘technical issue’ for the calls around 3.15am, the company has since been slammed for it’s ‘insincere’ approach to the matter.
Early in the morning on March 12, Rebecca Ringshall, 63, picked up the phone to hear an automated voice saying: ‘This is British Gas, we want to conduct a survey asking how did we do?’
Ms Ringshall has an elderly mother who is 92 and in a care home – so she ‘feared the worst’ when she heard the phone ring.
She told the Telegraph: ‘We have had the discussion with the home, if she is starting to fade, my mum has said she wants my brother and I with her.
‘So when the phone rang, I did fear the worst for a couple of seconds. I thought they might say something like “your mother has passed away in her sleep”.
‘When I realised it was British Gas, I just couldn’t believe it. I just put the phone down, I was thoroughly hacked off about it.’
One customer said she thought her elderly mother had died (Picture: Getty)
The automated phone call came a week after Ms Ringshall had been on the phone ‘all day’ to try to remedy a £30 overpayment after she had closed her mother’s account last year.
She is yet to receive the refund, she said, and British Gas has apologised: ‘We completely understand that a phone call in the middle of the night creates worry.’
The issue has since been resolved, British Gas said, with only a ‘small number’ of customers affected by rude awakening.
Were you a British Gas customer who was woken up in the middle of the night? Please contact sarah.hooper@metro.co.uk if you were.
But the handling of Ms Ringshall’s complaint has infuriated her, after the company said they had ‘been in a similar situation to you in the past and my heart goes out to you with this.’
She added: ‘They went completely over the top which really wound me up. You don’t have to go out with “my heart goes out to you”, I’m sorry, it’s just insincere.’
Metro.co.uk has reached out to other British Gas customers who were affected by the calling technical issue.
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