Saturday, February 02, 2008

Emergency......we'll be with you in a minute. Or two. Or when it's too late.

Well it's not an emergency as such, but it is a pressing issue, unless you don't mind water all over your bathroom floor. You need to bear in mind that I'm not very good at DIY. I've been known to have a few disasters in my time building Lego or fixing a bike puncture. In fact my wife goes into a nervous twitchy mode if I even glance at my toolbox.

So, the sight of a dripping leak from our toilet cistern heralded thoughts of calling out a plumber. That can be very expensive round these parts - if you can find one who's got a slot free in the next three months that is.

Then I remembered that we have plumbing emergency cover from a company called "Homeserve" which we've had for years, and we also have some short term "free" covers for dripping taps and leaks. "Aha", I thought ideal.

I dug out the paperwork and then lost myslef amongst the myriad of exclusions to the cover, which don't explicitly say "we don't cover leaking toilet cisterns" but probably does.

Anyway, I thought, let's give them a call. The worst they can say is no, then I can rant "What's the point of having the b****y cover!" and cancel all my policies with them. So I rang them.

That was an hour ago, and I'm still on hold waiting to be put through to an "advisor". Good job it's not a major plumbing emergency like a burst pipe or I'd have drowned 40 minutes ago.

I haven't even been periodically told "My call is valued" or "We're experiencing a high volume of calls and will be with you just as soon as we can". Just an hour of inane bongo drums and some woman going "Ahhh, aaahh, oooh, oooh" . Not even a real song!

I know the country is deep withing the grip of a natural disaster (we're in the UK so that means it's a bit breezy in places and some parts of the country have had 3 inches of snow).

For God's sake, they're an emergency helpline.

I'll update this post when I get through - 63 minutes now and counting - but I'll bet they won't cover me.

Update:
I gave up after an hour and 20 minutes.

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