I heard over the weekend that Thames Water have been been given a “Best Water in the UK” award.  Or something.   I only half heard it on the radio, but it caught my ear due to my own recent water based heroics.

There was no mention of cape-less crusaders delivering water to needy homes, which I am sure you would agree is much more news worthy.  Instead, they just went on a bit about it being ‘good’ water, followed by a brief discussion on why it is the best water.

Apparently, Thames Water is the ‘best’ because they had the least number of complaints last year of all the water companies.

This strikes me as a strange way of determining which is the best.  It is a bit like saying Gary Glitter is the best Paedophile because only two girls complained about him.

It is a pretty damning indictment of the industry if having the least complaints is the new benchmark to aspire to.  What about counting customer congratulations?  The numbers would be much smaller, so it would be an easier process to manage and it would offer the consumer a nice bargaining chip when discussing and bill related queries.

There would be a lot of nil-nil draws though.