For whatever reason, our gas and electricity company is changing to Powergen. It promised the ability to manage our account online and listed useful features which I looked forward to using.

Unfortunately, on going to the website for the first time to activate my account, I received proof that Powergen has its head in the sand (or somewhere else) when it comes to customer service.

Yes, the old classic “your browser is not supported by this website”. Aaargh. Perpetrated by many companies including my mortgage company The Woolwich, who annoyingly refuse to acknowledge me as an online customer because of my choice of browser (with the result that I can’t avail myself of some of the services I need online), this issue shouldn’t exist in this millenium.

Of course, my browser is a nice up-to-date Galeon (an extremely normal browser for the Gnome environment) and not “Netscape 1.3.5″ as Powergen seems to think. To Powergen’s slight credit, they do at least acknowledge non-MS platforms and browsers. But it’s still extremely frustrating. Good grief.

Powergen joins others in the hall of shame in this respect.