Brent Council - service failure

After 10 years of requests for help you would think that Mr Mustard has seen it all, not so, there is always a little surprise popping into his inbox, like this one.

Mr Mustard knew that Brent Council had wound the claptrapometer up to ten and decided to have some fun. The letter rejecting the informal challenge, the one made in response to the PCN placed on the car, said this:

Mr Mustard did read and understand it and so he sent the following:

Look what came back (actually it was sent to the motorist and not to Mr Mustard)

Mr Mustard hadn't made a further challenge as he so clearly stated, so why was his email treated as one? because a computer replied, not a human being.

Mr Mustard wasn't raising a point that the council had answered, as otherwise he wouldn't have asked the question that he did.

Mr Mustard didn't feel strongly about the point, he was simply trying to see what Brent Council knew that he and the motorist didn't know.

Mr Mustard surmised that what Brent Council had done was to misunderstand what the AA had said about the battery they supplied after the breakdown, not the one that had been in the car when it was purchased second-hand and which wouldn't therefore have a current warranty.

Mr Mustard isn't one to let a computer get the better of him so he sent another email on 5 January 2022 (the council's plan to limit the amount of correspondence per PCN now starting to go horribly wrong for them)

It didn't take long for a human being to look at the file and conclude that the computer, programmed by a human being (hopefully) had put Brent Council in hot water. The reply dated 9 January referred to representations, none had been made (or else they are referring to the ones they rejected at the start) but it was the expected volte face (trying to think up a joke about volts being missing but have failed, much like the battery itself and Brent Council even more so) and the underlying objective was achieved, a cancellation.

It is only now that Mr Mustard has carefully read the cancellation, the benefit of the doubt? Your car refuses to start and you have an AA call out, you have a bill for a new battery, it is an item for which there is no servicing requirement, where the Dickens is the doubt?

There might be some respect for a council if it openly and honestly admitted that their first response was a travesty, that the writer (ah, the computer programmer) had been educated about their behaviour and that they were sorry. As it is Brent Council look like shysters.

There is more fun to come yet with the formal Freedom of Information and Subject Access Request responses because Mr Mustard is going to insist on them and they have been logged by the relevant department.

Not quite the end.