HomeServe sends racial slur in letter to customer

A home emergency repairs business has sent a letter to a customer in which his name was changed to include the word "Paki".

Amit Damani-Patel, from Leicester, said he was appalled to read the letter - addressed to "Mr Damani-Paki" - from HomeServe's gas service department.

He said: "I was shocked, I had to read it three or four times. I could not believe what I was reading."

HomeServe apologised and said a staff member had changed the letter manually.

In a statement, the Walsall-based company said: "Our investigation has shown that an individual staff member has manually changed a letter to a customer.

"We take full responsibility for this and have taken immediate action. We are confident that the cause of the issue has been addressed."

The statement added: "This is not us; we are an extremely diverse and inclusive company, and we are really proud of this. The actions of one individual are absolutely not representative of our company.

"We send millions of letters every year. Nothing like this has ever happened before and we will do everything we can to ensure it never happens again."

Mr Damani-Patel, who is of Indian origin, said the letter "made my stomach churn".

He said: "I actually thought it was a joke - I thought there is no way this can be real."

The 31-year-old, who is currently working in Texas, added: "They have no idea about my heritage - I am British born and bred."

The Race Equality Centre in Leicester said it found it "difficult to see" how the letter could have been accidental.

"Deliberate or not, there clearly needs to be a thorough investigation by HomeServe to establish how such a letter could be posted by one of their employees to their customer," a spokeswoman said.

People also took to Facebook to criticise the firm.

Josh Bryan wrote: "When I realised what someone had done I was horrified. It's 2015, hard to believe there are still people who find that kind of thing funny."

Paresh Daman wrote: "This doesn't look like a mistake. Wow HomeServe I wonder how many Asian customers you'll still have after this."

In February 2013, HomeServe was fined £30.6m for poor complaints handling and mis-selling, according to the Guardian website, external.

In 2011, the company suspended its entire sales workforce amid fears staff had been mis-selling its products.

HomeServe said it would respond to Mr Damani-Patel as soon as the investigation was completed.