Gas Company Grumble

I figured if the Tom can vent on this blog so can I, so here it goes:

We received a terse letter from the gas company last month. Basically it said that they attempted several times to contact us on the lack of our gas usage. So we called them and said that we have never been contacted and confirmed that they had the correct phone number. We also scheduled a time for them to come out and look at our meter. Get this- they scheduled a time window of 12pm and 11pm - you guessed it- an eleven hour window with no call ahead option. Lovely.
Well today was the day of their visit. I was all set for them- I had the last few months bills and the stats to show that our gas usage is comparable to the usage from last summer. I was also ready to show them that we paid a huge estimated bill in March and for the last few months we have had a credit since the furnace has been off and the only other gas user in our house is the hot water tank.
As luck would have it they showed up today just after 12:00. They spent all of three minutes at our place. They looked at the meter and said- "yep it's working" and that was it. One rude letter, One upset phone call and One afternoon wasted since nothing was planned all for a "yep". I guess the gas company doesn't believe us when we tell them it was more their fault than ours that they estimated too high in March.
I now know why our gas bill is so high- it took someone to print the letter, someone to answer the phone call, two people in the truck to look at the meter and the gasoline to drive to our house. That is 4 salaries wasted for three minutes tops say- "yep it's working".