Panic!

I had customer phoning today in a right panic. He asked me to put him through to customer service. When I asked what it concerned he said “drilling”. Well our customer service certainly don’t deal with drilling.

I asked the person for more details to which he explained, in a panic, that he needed customer service about the drilling in the water supply. I asked if it was to do with a claim, thinking it could be a repair he was talking about. The poor guy was in such a panic that he was breathless and incoherent.

After much questioning he eventually explained that he had seen a TV program about some company in the US drilling into the water supply pipe and mixing the water with gas. According to him the program stated that when a householder turned on the tap water and gas were pouring out togeth, the gas then catching fire.

“Haven’t you seen it?” he paniced. “You can probably get it on catch up. You must watch it.”

Well, I took a look on the internet. That source of all knowledge told me that unscrupolous companies in the US were drilling for natural gas in a way that was polluting water and the environment. That doesn’t mean that it is happening in the UK. In fact the US is one of the biggest polluters in the world so it is not surprising that their own companies are poisoning them. Besides the environmental agencies in the regions affected are putting safeguards in place. And I can’t see American citizens being happy about a polluted water supply.

I’m pretty sure if it happened in the UK the local population would be in an uproar, and would force closure until safeguards are put in place.

That said, why ring me? I work for an insurance company not a natural gas drilling company. I work full time so don’t get chance to watch TV programs during the day. If I was on the dole I probably would be watching TV as there wouldn’t be anything else to do.

Why didn’t this guy do a bit of research himself?. Why start to panic over scare mongering tactics that are so popular by the media? We all know they do it. This is yet another case of someone not looking things up for themselves and allowing the media to tell them what to believe.