More that 30 years have passed since the Claridge family settled on Mono's

Golden Road (at this time of the year more appropriately dubbed Goldenrod Road, its rumoured original title) and a lot has changed, not all for the good.

Back in the 1970s, life was a lot simpler, particularly when it came to dealing with utilities. When the power went off you blamed Ontario Hydro, and when something went wrong with a natural gas appliance you contacted Consumers' Gas. (Oh yes, and Mono was still just a township.)

These days, when the power goes off (as it does with increasing frequency), you have to deal with an institution called Hydro One which, as was mentioned here previously, has managed to devise a 24-hour "emergencies and outages" calling system that has a seemingly foolproof means of preventing customers from ever reaching a real, live Hydro One employee. Your best hope is that when the day-shift staff turns up the next morning they'll check on your plight and maybe dispatch a crew later that day to fix something that in past would have been corrected in short order.

Well, a similar situation seems to apply when you suddenly discover that your gas-fired water heater has gone on the fritz.

That happened to us recently, when we awoke on a Wednesday morning to discover that the hot-water tap was churning out a product that was barely luke warm.

We immediately called our natural gas supplier, Enbridge Gas Distribution Inc., only to be advised that (a) since there was no gas smell there was no emergency and (b) since the problem was with a leased water heater we'd have to deal with Direct Energy, which had taken over the appliance side of the gas business even before Consumers' was purchased by multinational Enbridge.

So we called Direct Energy to report our lack of hot water and once more were asked whether there was a smell of gas. When we said no, but added that there was an apparent slow leak and that the pilot light had gone out, we were promised that someone would be out to check on the appliance "sometime between noon and 4 o'clock."

That sounded reasonable enough, and when we mentioned that no one would normally be home on a Wednesday when the paper was being put to bed and assured them that one of us would be out to the house within five minutes of them calling the office, the lady said that would be fine and took down the office number.

Well, no call had come in by the time we left, yet when we got home a little after 2 p.m., there was a note on the door saying Direct Energy had been there at 12:50 and no one was home. (Surprise!)

We immediately called Direct Energy, only to be told (a) that our record did, indeed, show that the inspector was to call 941-2230 before getting to the house, and (b) that the "appointment" would have to be rescheduled for between 6 and 10 p.m. (There was seemingly no way they could reach the guy who hadn't followed the instruction to advise him that there was indeed someone home and he should return.)

Well, we stayed home all evening, and when 10 o'clock came and went called Direct Energy once more.We were assured that someone was "en route" and would be there within the half hour.

When the half hour came and went and still no car had shown up in the driveway, we called once more, winning an assurance that the guy would be there any minute.

Another half hour went by and yet another call produced the amazing report that the employee had called in saying he'd come to the house, knocked on the door and even called the home phone but no one was home!

To add insult to injury, we were told the earliest they could send someone was the next day between 12:20 and 4:20 p.m.!

Having decided that was not my idea of customer service, I called yet again and demanded to talk to a supervisor, learning for a first time that the firm had personnel assigned to deal with "unsatisfactory appointments."

After the usual few minutes of being treated to on-hold music, I did indeed get a friendly supervisor who conceded that we had a problem and suddenly discovered that an inspector could make it to the house around 11:30 a.m. or shortly thereafter.

He did show up, at about 12:30, and within minutes had condemned the seven-year-old water heater (which replaced one that had lasted 23 years) and said they'd have a new one installed the next morning.

True to his word, a Direct Energy truck pulled into the driveway at 8:25 and within 50 minutes we had a new water heater, thanks to expert work by the same Orangeville man who'd done the previous heater exchange.

Told of our experience the previous two days, the friendly technician said we were by no means the first to have such complaints and agreed the firm needs to find ways of quickly remedying its employees' screwups.

A visit to directenergy.com discloses a "customer charter" which describes Direct Energy as "a North American market leader in energy and related services," and adds: "Our success is the result of our commitment to our customers."

Perhaps that commitment should include one of living up to promises.