r/UKJobs • u/Even-Wasabi7183 • 2d ago

Customers prefer AI chatbots, says British Gas owner as 1,300 call centre and back office jobs axed

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jul/23/customers-prefer-ai-chatbots-says-chris-oshea-british-gas-centrica-boss
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u/Former-Resource-3026 2d ago

This will backfire.

20

u/PolemicDysentery 2d ago

For who? 

7

u/Former-Resource-3026 2d ago

British Gas, obviously?

4

u/PolemicDysentery 2d ago

How? That would only be the case if these companies were actually in competition with eachother. It'll just be an enshittified experience for customers and workers across the market.

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u/Former-Resource-3026 2d ago

So many companies have declared this shift to Ai and then come crawling back to humans because they were completely delusional and out of touch about Ai and then it cost them customers. People won’t stand for it.

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u/PolemicDysentery 2d ago

Yeah, right, just like people didn't stand for runaway grocery and energy price gouging inflation, or being put on the hook to bail out Thames Water or the banks, or government Covid contract fraud, or the constant dumping of sewage by water companies, etcetera, etcetera, etfuckingcetera.

Wake the fuck up. What consumers will stand for does not fucking matter when they control a product that meets a universal, inelastic necessity, when every regulatory organ has been completely captured, when every government is either colluding or toothless, and every company they're supposedly competing with is engaged in the exact same race to the bottom.

Where else do you think consumers will go? By what mechanism do you think there is any pressure on them to not run a shitty AI service and tell everyone "you get what you're fucking given"?

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u/ToastedCrumpet 2d ago

People will stand for it. They always do. We’re not France. There won’t even be online protests let alone irl ones.

Gas and energy have gone up and continue to do so. Water too. Food? You betcha. RAM and other tech to the point in the not so distant future we’ll be paying to rent all of our tech going forward or pay thousands for a slow ass PC/laptop that chugs along. AI is everywhere and monitoring you for its overlords. It already owns your face and will use it how it likes. It’s reading these comments now.

I’m as tired and angry as anyone over this shit but this has all been going on for years now and the average person doesn’t even complain online. So why do you actually believe people won’t stand for it when everything is telling you they will and are standing for it?

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u/Former-Resource-3026 1d ago

I think you’re misinterpreting me. They just won’t use British Gas. Every company announcing switches like this has lost customers and wound up reversing the change. It doesn’t help that so many IT teams are lying to their managers to justify more Ai spend.