Gary Andrews

I’ve learned to become reasonably patient with the customer service departments of assorted multinational corporations I invariably have to deal with from time to time. Having done similar jobs when I was a student, I know that a) the job is usually crap; and b) customers getting angry and giving grief doesn’t usually solve anything quickly. Usually it doesn’t take more than a couple of calls to sort the problem out and mobile phone providers, banks and even NTL got there eventually (only just with the last one, but they were always polite and reasonably helpful).

I am, however, rapidly running out of patience with British Gas. Their customer service ranks up their with the very worst.

The situation is thus. In my house we have a boiler. Said boiler has thrown a hissy fit whereby it will no longer provide hot water unless the whole heating system is on in the house - radiators, the lot. In hot weather this means the house becomes a sauna if you want to do something like, ooh, the washing up, or have a shower.

I have been living in a sauna for the past week.

This problem hadn’t passed us by and about a month ago I called out British Gas to do a combined safety check and fix the boiler. Unfortunately the man they sent out hadn’t been informed he was meant to fix the boiler and, after having a quick poke about, concluded there was something reasonably major wrong and would need the right tools and more time. He was very pleasant about it all though, and fitted a carbon monoxide detector, so we didn’t die. Which was nice.

From here my housemate took up the reigns and tried to arrange somebody to come back and fix the boiler. They didn’t turn up.

Housemate then rearranges an appointment. This time they turn up but at the wrong time, when nobody is in.

The boiler’s still not fixed by this stage, but we’re slowly getting a working sauna.

Housemate rings up for a third time. At this stage, he’s told they do evening visits. Which would have been nice to know beforehand so he didn’t have to take a couple of days off work to wait for Godot the gasman. But anyway, a third visit was duly arranged for last night.

No gasman. Not even a hint of a gasman.

At this point, housemate becomes frustrated and passes on the organisation to Housemate 2, least he utter unpleasant four letter words at the customer service bod at the other end of the phone.

Housemate 2 rings British Gas to arrange another evening or weekend appointment only to be told British Gas don’t do evening or weekend appointments.

Housemate 2 rings landlady to find a convenient time for her to ‘house sit’ the gasman.

Housemate 2 re-rings British Gas and is offered an evening or weekend appointment but with a day already agreed with the landlady, and with levels of Schrodinger-like doubt as to the existence of these evening or weekend appointments, duly passes on this offer.

So, we have the landlady popping over to our house on Friday waiting for a British Gas boiler fixer who may or may not turn up, or even exist, such is the existential nature of their service. I hope she’s impressed I strimmed the lawn last weekend

Fortunately our landlady has a service plan with British Gas, so we’ve not had to pay anything. But if I was her, I’d be somewhat miffed that I’m paying this money for somebody not to turn up. If I wanted to spend money on somebody doing that, I’d pay it direct to Kate Bush or some other reclusive celebrity.

It’s not the first time I’ve had problems with British Gas. When I tried to swop suppliers in a different house a few years ago, British Gas seemed to have a problem letting go of me and continued to bill me, despite another utility company also sending me bills. When this was pointed out to British Gas, their response was to send us letters with lots of red on it, warning us of dire consequences if we didn’t pay our bill.

So, I await Friday with baited breath, and whether or not my breath gets sufficiently baited on Friday, I’m going to suggest to the landlady to switch accounts to a company that actually knows what its doing and has employees that actually exist.

Largely because of work-related stuff plus sunshine, and other social activity (blogger has social life, shock horror).

Anyway, the sunshine seems to be receding, the football season is coming to an end, or will do for me after Exeter City’s trip to Wembley on Sunday, and my two major projects have blossomed to fruition.

Firstly, along with several others, I’ve been beavering away on this new little press centre for ITV. I’ll let my colleague Ben take it from here...

“As well as the freshest information on ITV programming and corporate news, there are new tools and functionality that includes video clips in an integrated media player, downloadable audio clips and RSS feeds for the latest press releases.

The ITV Press Centre is still aimed at journalists, but access is now available to all who want to be kept abreast of ITV content and developments. Those who are really keen to know the latest as it happens can follow ITV on Twitter where followers will receive the latest news as it happens plus titbits from show publicists.”

There’s still lots to be done on it but at least it is now live and largely working. Which is always a relief.

Then there’s the England Legends v Scotland Legends match tomorrow night at Southampton, which I was drafted onto a few weeks ago, and involved, among other things, catching up for a quick chin-wag with Peter Reid. Once the final whistle goes tomorrow I can relax a bit more than of late, starting with cheering Exeter onto League 2 (hopefully) at the weekend.

Ok, I’m still looking busy, but I should get time for more tea than of late, which will come as a relief to others in the office. I’m a firm believer in sharing the tea love, so if I’m having one, I’ll make one for you.

[If you want to return the favour, I have mine strong with a dash of milk. Or occasionally an Earl Grey, as it should be].

At Soccerlens on the sad demise of Halifax Town and Altrincham’s third reprieve.

Nope, I’m still not tiring of it yet. I’ve been really impressed with Catherine Tate considering nothing on earth would have compelled me to watch her sketch show, and I haven’t found myself longing for next week’s preview too many time so far. Last week’s episode wasn’t the best Who ever, but still pretty decent. I do feel in a bit of a minority though. Most places I read regularly seem to hate it.

Am I alone here?

Sometimes us PR people can cross the line a tad, especially when it comes to pestering journalists for this, that, and t’other. There’s nothing more irritating than having your personal peace and quiet disrupted by a rouge email to your inbox or a phone call to your personal mobile number. An old journalist colleague even had a marketing person ring their land line at all hours trying to push less-than-stellar interviews.

But a ‘cold’ email to the work account? That’s fair enough. I used to get plenty in my inbox when I was a reporter and every now and then a real unsolicited nugget of a press release would crop up. If the PR bod was repeatedly emailing me when it was clear I was the wrong person, they’d get pointed in the right direction.

Now, on the other side of the fence, if I can get to chat to the journalist that I’ve not had contact with before and give them a heads up, brilliant, but sometimes there’s just not the time and a ‘cold’ release has to do. And if I get a request not to email, or to send the release elsewhere, that’s not a problem.

But what to do with bloggers? I’m always of the opinion that if the blog is either good enough or influential enough then I’m happy to treat requests and releases in the same way I would any other journalist or reporter. After all, they’re getting the message out there, which is the key part.

Obviously this is within reason - if a national newspaper or broadcaster needed something, be it a response or clip, asap they’d probably get preference. But then if the blog wanted something quickly and the other requests could wait, they’d go to the top of my intray.

But how to make first contact [1]? Now there’s the rub. If I was rushing to get a release out and wanted to make sure it got to a blog I’d not worked with before then there’s a possibility I may send it to a personal email address by mistake, and incur said blogger’s wrath.

One reason some people I’ve met in both journalism and PR are a bit wary with bloggers is the reaction they may get when they make that first contact, or even second or third contact. If a journalist doesn’t like your release, chances are they’ll hit the delete button and have a few minutes of exchanging cutting remarks with colleagues before getting back to whatever they were doing.

Bloggers will occasionally take that one step further and take that tirade online. Sometimes this is justified if whatever they’ve been sent is utter garbage or completely crosses the line. Other times it can be unfair to the PR bod who’s put in a lot of work only to see it trashed.

Ok, this isn’t that common and a lot of blog editors are happy they’re finally being taken seriously as a medium, and from a personal point of view, it’s incredibly gratifying both from a journalist and PR perspective when your work does get picked up and discussed around the blogosphere. But getting it out there is always tricky.

At the end of the day, contact has to start somewhere and if it isn’t always obvious or clear where to go to, there’s always the risk of winding up in a personal inbox.

As a rule, if I’m contacting a blog for the first time, I’ll make it clear in the opening email that I’m happy to send material to a different address if I have picked up the wrong one by mistake. I’ll also ask them to email back if they don’t want releases full stop, or they do want releases just on topic x and not topic y, and so forth.

A little bit of dialogue can often go a long way, and it’s as much feedback for me as it is for anybody working predominantly online.

[1] So to speak. Bloggers and blog editors aren’t alien lifeforms, although some in the media would have you believe otherwise.

And I am. And I have been. And’s it’s been sunny outside. And lots of football. And then half my tooth fell off earlier while biting into a cheese baguette, and that was really rather painful, and the hole where the tooth was has now been filled and that took time (and money. Lots of it) as well.

In conclusion, this is why I have not been blogging much.

There is stuff to come, in the form of half a dozen poorly written and badly thought through drafts, which I bet you all can’t wait for.

Unless it stays sunny. Or my whole mouth falls off, or somebody tries to invade my street with uzi-wielding five-year-olds. In which case, I reserve the right not to blog much for a bit longer.