Red-faced Scottish Water bosses said sorry to an Angus customer this week after he had to pay for the privilege of picking up a letter from the firm apologising for an undrinkable local supply!
Former police officer Brian Ogilvie was one of a host of Letham residents hit by recent problems after a mains burst left villagers with badly discoloured water pouring through their pipes.
The water company shipped in bottled supplies to tide residents over during the works period, but Mr Ogilvie was angry that he was not told about the emergency provision despite being one of the residents to contact Scottish Water when the problems arose.
Letham supplies returned to normal after a couple of days but Mr Ogilvie’s mood towards Scottish Water remains very cool after the admin blunder which left him £1.36 lighter for collecting the letter of apology the firm sent out to locals.
”I wasn’t happy that we weren’t told bottled water was being brought into the village and on the weekend when the problems happened I didn’t see any Scottish Water activity around Letham, so I think it could have been handled a lot better by them,” he said.
”But I then got a note from the postie to say there was a letter for me to be collected at the Forfar delivery office. You never know what these things are it could be something important that has to be signed for so you don’t want to take the chance of ignoring it.”
After the five-mile trip to Forfar he was presented with the unfranked letter and paid up the £1 handling fee along with the 36p postage shortfall.
”I couldn’t believe it when I opened it up and discovered it was a letter from Scottish Water apologising for the water problems that just capped it all,” said Mr Ogilvie.
The Dear Customer missive said the firm wanted to ”sincerely apologise for any distress or inconvenience” experienced as a result of the discolouration of the Letham supply.
It repeated the earlier assurance that the dirty water was not in any way a health risk, but admitted customers would have found it ”visually unpleasant, very concerning and inconvenient.”
After hearing about the letter mishap, Scottish Water offered yet another apology to the Burnside Road resident.
A spokesman said: ”We would like to take this opportunity to apologise to the customer for this administration error. His letter should have been franked with the adequate amount of postage but it appears an error occurred on this occasion.”