The gas man cometh

A few weeks ago we had the gas man visit to give our ancient Ideal Mexico boiler its annual check up. A boiler which has never given us any trouble and which everyone says is a marvel of gas engineering.

However, the muttering from the various gas men is getting louder. First they stop making the spare parts. Then it gets hard to get them. And now we are on the third degree. Think how much money you could save if you bought a new boiler with our special, never to be repeated discount only available to our most-valued customers. And, as a special concession from the gas board, you can now, once again, have a boiler which goes up the chimney provided, rather than having to remodel one's entire kitchen. Maybe even one which allows us to keep our airing cupboard, essential for the proper proving of bread dough, not to mention the drying of socks and such like.

So we succumbed to the extent of accepting the offer of a free, no obligation estimate.

I fix up the appointment online and we await developments, expecting a fairly hard sell from a real toe-in-the-door type. A type who will have his eye firmly on his commission, no doubt much enhanced if he manages to extract a cheque from us on the spot. All rather tiresome.

We get several emails confirming that the gas man will visit us on such and such a day.

We get a new gas bill by email pointer to an elaborate web site, a bill which is several pages long and more or less incomprehensible. Except that we see the gas board cannot shake themselves out of their thirty year habit of dropping the monthly payment down at one bill and then jerking it back up again a couple of bills later. Again, all rather tiresome.

We get several text messages about the impending visit, the last being 0830 this morning.

Then at 1130, out on Horton Lane, I miss a call on my mobile, but get a voicemail from a lady with a Manchester accent (can the call centre computers do that yet, with the supervisor picking the regional accent of the day from a drop down menu?), cancelling the appointment for this afternoon and inviting us to make a new one.

We are considering our position. With 'don't fix what ain't broke' very much in mind.

PS: in the event of the toe-in-the-door type getting too tiresome, we had thought we might go nuclear and threaten to dump British Gas and buy our gas from our electricity supplier - French, as it happens. Or perhaps from our internet provider.