I tried to report a smell of gas outside my home. After getting through I was forced to listen to a litany of instructions on not providing any source of ignition, details of stuff on carbon monoxide etc. that went on and on before being interrupted by a human being.

He insisted of reading out a script at high speed about opening all doors and windows and clearly cared little about the fact that the leak was outside and not in our house at all. I had to tell him to stop talking to get this over to him. I wanted to tell him that the smell came from a previous repair and the fact the ground had sunk noticeably, but had to shout him down to get this information over.

It was almost enough to make me think twice about reporting a gas leak. Hardly the sort of thing you'd want to encourage in a leak reporting line!