Appointments

I received a letter the other day from British Gas telling me that they had to change my gas meter. There was no explanation given as to why. It's functioning perfectly well and my house doesn't explode whenever I light a match so it's not leaking either.

Anyway, they had generously allocated me an "appointment". This "appointment" was for a Thursday, between the hours of 8am and 8pm. How is this an appointment? This is - literally - half a day. Half a day when nearly everybody is going to be at work. That is not an appointment. That is ridiculous.

Do they really expect people to wait in for 12 hours for somebody to turn up? Are they really that disorganised that they can't get somebody to my house within, a 2 or 4 hour window? It's not like they are going to be coming from Scotland or something, they'll have local engineers.

I called them and got 4 completely pointless options:

If you have an appointment already and wish to change it, press 1.
If you have rearranged your appointment and wish to change it again, press 2.
If you wish to cancel a previously arranged appointment, press 3.
If you wish to shout at somebody about these pointless options, press 4.

Ok, the last one obviously wasn't that, but it was very similar to the first three - I just can't remember what. Quite why options are needed there I have no idea.

I pressed 1 and said I wanted a proper meter, not a pre-pay one like I had now. This meant that I had to call another number, but at least she canceled the stupid 12-hour "appointment" so I can now go back to ignoring them.