36 minutes on the phone to British gas

10.27.37am UTC (GMT +0000) Wed 14th Feb 2007

Cllr Sunderland who is helping a resident with a gas prepayment meter problem has written to British Gas and Energy Watch protesting about the length of time taken to get a reply on the phone. She said

" Starting at 9 am I held for 26 minutes during which time I listened to 62 repeats of the message asking me to hold and 62 bursts of music. I then spoke to someone and was put on hold again for another five minutes. At the end of this time I had a five minute conversation and was told that my query could not be dealt with and was asked to phone back later.

For the whole 36 minutes I was being charged for the call at local call rates and for that I got nowhere.

I think it is completely unreasonable to for British Gas to keep customers on hold for that length of time. People using prepayment cards are usually on low incomes and simply can't afford to waste money on long phone calls.

I have written to British Gas and Energywatch to ask what they intend to do to stop this happening. "