EGGS

Laura waited. The 0870 number was fine for BT users but with Virgin, it was costing 30p a minute.
She looked at the handset to see that she’d been waiting for fourteen minutes. Getting through hadn’t been a problem. It was being transferred to the right person that took the time, and this was the fourth call she’d made. The other three calls were, say, five minutes each. One cut her off after she’d extracted the right department from the computerised receptionist and the other two were her own fault for getting flustered and tapping in the wrong numbers.
Laura couldn't stand speaking to automated services, a new advancement at English Gas Generation Services (EGGS), and had trouble with the technical jargon that described each department’s designated task engineers, as they liked to be called.
At 30p a minute, her phone bill had increased by a tenner including VAT.
Her husband wouldn’t be too pleased if he knew, but the leak in the bathroom had to be dealt with.
Laura discovered the leak three weeks ago when she noticed water from the hallway ceiling dripping onto the new oak flooring. She immediately called in EGGS.
The engineer was British and assured her that the problem had been fixed after a quick look. He seemed quite affable, she thought, but she couldn’t understand why he kept going on about EGGS’ new electricity deal and how she could save an average of 45% if she signed up to it there and then.
‘It’s good to put all your eggs in one basket sometimes, Mrs Green,’ said the engineer.
Laura thanked him but declined the offer, assuring him that she’d look into it with her husband.
When the leak persisted, Laura called in another EGGS engineer, a very cheery Asian fellow, who again said he’d fixed the leak in no time. He too kept banging on about EGGS’ new electricity deal as he worked.
Again, Laura declined, and again the leak persisted.
The third engineer was a burly Polish chap. Laura put her foot down and told him that two engineers had already been around and told her they’d fixed it when they clearly hadn’t, and that she didn’t want to talk about any EGGS electricity until the work had been done correctly.
The Pole nodded to her and got on with his work.
‘Here faulty,’ he said, pointing to a switch. ‘Need changing. I get kit from van, OK?’
Laura felt a wave of relief and after twenty minutes the engineer said he’d fixed the problem.
‘We talk about EGGS electricity deal now?’ he asked.
‘I’ll discuss it with my husband when he gets back. Thank you very much.’
‘Here my card, madam. If you choose deal, please say my name. Thank you, madam.’
A week later, the decorator, Dave, came to paint the kitchen and noticed the ceiling in the hallway.
‘That looks nasty,’ he said.
The dry lining had puffed up and come away from the surface.
‘Oh that,’ said Laura. ‘There was a leak in the bathroom. It’s been fixed now, apparently.’
Dave looked down at the oak flooring. It had started to buckle. ‘Wasn’t EGGS, was it?’
‘Yes it was, actually. Right load of use they are,’ said Laura. ‘It took three visits to find out what the problem was.’
‘Did they try to sell you cheap electricity?’ asked Dave.
‘Did they? They wouldn’t stop banging on about it.’
‘Just don’t sign anything. It’s a con.’
Laura looked relieved but didn’t ask Dave to elaborate.
‘Those oak veneers are getting thinner and thinner,’ said Dave, as if to himself. ‘Look at the way it’s buckled.’
‘Oak veneer?’ replied Laura, almost disgusted. ‘That’s a solid oak floor.’
Dave offered his sympathetic, bemused face to Laura, wondering how to break the news.
‘That’s not solid, I’m afraid. If that was solid, it wouldn’t have buckled with a little bit of water. No, that’s a veneer. It’s just chipboard underneath.’
Laura clutched hold of her heart. ‘We were assured that it was solid oak.’
‘Best get onto them,’ said Dave. ‘Get them round when I’m here. I’ll show them it’s not solid oak flooring with my chisel if they try and pull the wool over.’
‘I think I’ll do that, thanks.’
He nodded and then looked up at the ceiling again.
Laura had always liked Dave, who’d painted just about every room in the house at some time or other.
Using a paint-pot, Dave eased himself up to run a hand over the ceiling. ‘You sure that’s been sorted? Feels very wet to me.’
Laura explained but Dave didn’t like the sound of it.
‘Can I put a blade to it? See if the plaster’s alright behind the lining.’
Laura nodded so Dave got his steps and cut a line across the lining to reveal a section of plasterboard.
‘This hasn’t even been plastered,’ he said.
‘Yes, I know.’ Laura looked away, embarrassed. ‘It’s quite a new house. They did it the European way, apparently.’
‘Hmm,’ said Dave.
With the lining of the plasterboard opened up, he poked his blade inside and gouged out some very wet plaster.
‘Looks suspect to me. I bet it’s the insulating pipe,’ he said.
‘Hmm,’ hummed Laura, finding it hard to settle with the uncomfortable feeling that Dave knew more about gas fitting than EGGS.
Dave got on with his work in the kitchen and at lunchtime, Laura came downstairs and yelped from the hallway.
Dave opened the door and there it was; a small puddle of water.
‘Knew it,’ he said. ‘The leak’s been hiding away in the plaster. See where it’s coming from?’ he pointed to where he’d made the incision, ‘I doubt it’s been fixed, you know.’

Laura had waited on the phone for an answer for precisely nineteen minutes, all of which had repeated the string-accompanied advertisement for EGGS’ new electricity deal; streamlined billing, massively discounted products, for the discerning client, strings reach a crescendo.
‘EGGS general enquiries, how can I help?’ squeaked a voice finally.
‘Hello, yes, I was put through to emergencies about twenty minutes ago..’
‘I’m sorry, madam, you’ve come through to general enquiries. Would you like me to transfer you?’
Before Laura had a chance to answer, the strings came back to haunt her, and so she waited, fuming.
‘Emergencies,’ said a voice.
Laura made everything quite clear and the telephonist guaranteed her that a supervising engineer would be over the next day between 8am and 1pm.
The next day, at 12.50pm, Laura received a call from EGGS to say that the supervising engineer would be with her in ten minutes.
‘Well, I’m sorry for the trouble caused, Mrs Green,’ said the supervising engineer, once he’d had a look upstairs. ‘Unfortunately, the engineers didn’t check the insulating pipe that runs under the floor.’
‘So you’ll deal with it now, will you?’ asked Laura, as upset as she was happy to have found the problem.
‘Well, yes, we will but we’ll have to charge you for the work,’ said the EGGS man.
‘What?’ said Laura. ‘Do you mean to say that I’m expected to pay for your engineers’ incompetence?’
‘Our engineers aren’t authorised to touch work that hasn’t been done by EGGS, and the insulating pipe was fitted when the house was built.’ The EGGS man looked down at his tablet and showed Laura her billing and all work undertaken by EGGS. ‘We can’t be responsible for the house builder’s work.’
‘So why did the engineers come out?’
‘They came out to fix the problem, madam, but as I said they aren’t authorised to check work done by outside companies. Besides that, insulating pipes don’t usually break.’
‘So they weren’t looking for the problem at all, were they? They were more interested in selling me EGGS’ electricity than the job they came to do.’
‘I was just coming to that, madam,’ said the man, straightening up to deliver his schpeel. ‘Did you know that you can save 45%..’
‘Get out of my house, now!’
Hearing Laura’s voice rise, Dave came out of the kitchen to join her.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked Laura from the bottom of the stairs.
‘This man is just leaving,’ she replied, and the EGGS man waddled down the stairs and out of the front door.
Dave made Laura a cup of tea and sat her down.
‘This is happening all the time,’ he said. ‘The energy companies are ripping people off left, right and centre. They’re just sharks.’
He told her how to go about getting compensation, listing the reasons why EGGS were responsible for not diagnosing the problem and allowing it to persist, identifying their own code of practice and the business laws that they were flaunting. The engineers’constant pestering about the EGGS electricity deal needed mentioning, too.
‘Works every time, but you need to put it down in writing, Laura. No phone calls, alright?’
Laura reached for her tea but her arm couldn’t get to it.
‘What’s wrong with your arm?’ asked Dave.
‘Oh, it’s been like this for a year now. I’ve asked my doctor but all he seems to want to do is prescribe me painkillers.’
Dave leant forward. ‘What sort of problem is it?’
Laura explained. She hadn’t been able to lift her right arm above her shoulder for almost a year and in the last two months her left arm was doing the same thing. She felt like a cripple, she said, and had tried all sorts of therapies from chiropractors to new-age scents and oils, acupuncture to relaxing massages.
‘It’s a build-up of calcium,’ Dave said. ‘Happened to a friend of mine, and he didn’t have any luck with his GP either. It takes two years for it to heal and there’s not much you can do, oh, apart from drive less if you can. Driving doesn’t help it at all.’
‘So what’s it called, this build-up of calcium?’ asked Laura, wide-eyed.
‘I’ve forgotten now. Let me call my mate up.’
So Dave called his friend and passed the phone to Laura. They chatted for five minutes, Laura’s voice whooping and lulling in wonderment of the conversation.
‘It’s called frozen shoulder,’ she said, passing Dave back his phone. ‘Unbelievable! It’s taken me all this time to find out what it was. Oh, thank you, Dave. I’m so grateful.’
‘Not a problem.’
Laura shook her head. ‘Has the world gone crazy?’
‘Yeah, it went mad about the time Maggie came along.’
Just then, the man who laid the oak flooring came over to survey the buckling.
He reeled off a few excuses (condensation above the house’s foundations/excess water damage/mopping etc.) but then Dave took his chisel out and offered to hack up a corner of the floor to prove it was a veneer.
‘I’ll prove it’s a veneer,’ he said, and smacked the hammer down onto the chisel. A short sliver popped out and slapped up against the skirting board, so he picked it up and gave it to the oak man without looking at it.
‘Can you go and find the bill for this work, please, Laura?’ asked Dave.
She scurried of in the living room with a smirk on her face and returned, passing it to the oak man.
‘I passed this work on to a subby who’s never let me down before,’ said the oak man unconvincingly, ‘but it’s definitely a veneer like you say, and you’ve paid for solid oak, so I can’t say fairer than that.’
Dave and Laura stood silently.
The oak man gave in. ‘I’ll replace it for you, don’t worry, Mrs Green, and that subby ain’t gonna get no more work off me.’
‘Thank you,’ said Laura.
The oak man would do it himself next week for her.
After he’d gone, Laura called her GP but he denied not telling her what was wrong and recommended she try a new drug that helped the memory.
The letter she wrote to the managing director of EGGS worked well, and she was compensated in full for the work that needed doing.