The Ticket Marked Resolved

Abstract

A case counted by its contacts can be solved four times before it is solved once. It is half past nine on a Wednesday evening, and a man is sitting at his kitchen table with the laptop open beside a plate he has pushed to one side. An email has just arrived from his energy supplier. Your case has been resolved, it says. How did we do? Tell us in one click. Below it are ten small numbers in a row, nought to ten. It is the fourth such email in five weeks. The case is a bill for a meter reading taken before he moved in, from the previous tenant's last month. He rang in October and was told it would be corrected. He received a corrected bill with the same figure on it. He used the chat on the website and was told the reading had been updated. He wrote a letter, because somebody at work said a letter goes to a different team. Each contact was closed. Each closure produced an email with ten numbers in it. The figure on the bill has not changed, and a reminder about it is due on Friday. His jaw has been set since the subject line.