How I got one over on the chat bot

‘Your service contract has been completed,’ said someone or something from British Gas, in the chat box on its website.

I had been watching the squiggly lines of the icon telling me a person or a bot was typing. When it finally spat that out as the reason I could not book an annual boiler service, I was baffled. Completed? Did they mean deleted?

I had to do battle with the chat box because there was no way of booking my annual service by logging in under my username and password. Everything I pressed directed me back to a home screen asking me to take out a contract.

But I was sure I already had one, which I took out last winter. I would have taken it out when the boiler was installed five years ago but British Gas told me they didn’t want to insure my new Worcester Bosch.

So I got my mate Terry the plumber to service it for three years, and then last year I had another go. I rang British Gas and they were delighted to give me a service contract. They sent an engineer out promptly to do a service.

Now if anyone can explain that to me, I would be delighted to hear their theory of why British Gas won’t service a new boiler but will service one that’s four years old.

The key thing is, I now have a contract, but I hadn’t heard anything from them approaching a year on, which was why I went online and tried to book another service. And when I couldn’t get anywhere I opened one of those blasted chat boxes.