Call centres – another reason you really don’t have time to go to work. The levels of customer service in this country are still by and large awful, based on recent experiences which came to a head this morning.
We got our eldest a new iPhone last month as their old contract expired, and having agreed a package, took free unlimited texts as part of it. (As I’ve previously noted, for teenagers today mobile phones aren’t for talking on!) 3 weeks after taking out the contract the phone stopped working, and when I phoned up I was told the credit limit had been exceeded, all due to texts; funny when we have unlimited texts, I said. They apologised and said it would be credited back against the account, and the phone was re-enabled. It happened again 3 weeks later, exactly the same issue, and the reason was the credit had never been processed by our mobile provider. Same again yesterday, cut off for the third time in less than 2 months! This time however on the first 5 times I tried to call, whatever selections I made on their menus, I got a recorded message about excessive demand for iPhone 5’s and hung up on. I JUST WANT TO SPEAK TO SOMEONE! No online chat facility available! No email address available! Eventually on the sixth call some 30 minutes later, I get music-on-hold, and after 10 minutes holding hallelujah a human voice. Very apologetic, yes still the same problem, credit not processed by the provider, but promised it had now been resolved, and the phone would be working again. I can’t get past the feeling you get what you pay for, and as prices fall service worsens. Do I believe the provider has sorted it out and the phone won’t be cut off again, of course not. Do I believe they care, of course not.
Funnily enough I’ve also been having a running battle with our broadband and TV provider recently, culminating in a complaint from myself listing 10 points of issue with their new service, (there were more, but 10 seemed enough). Their first response some 100 hours later, from India, despite an email promising me a response in 24-72 hours, was to tell me to turn the box off and turn it on again! Firstly, do they seriously believe I hadn’t tried that, and secondly, how does that help with my issues on the design of their new service. Lazy, late and not caring; in all rubbish service. To give you the abbreviated version, I sent their reply back, with a short pithy response, and 3 days later got a call from a nice chap who went through my points with me. However, the digital TV box is still turning itself off at random times during viewing so I called this morning and spent 20 minutes on the phone with an lady resetting the box remotely, and telling me the original software update had had some problems, but hopefully they were now resolved, and no it wasn’t just me! Why couldn’t they just have emailed their customers and pointed out the known issues, with the new software and design, and when they were expecting to have them fixed. As it is the rubbish customer service has led to another unhappy customer, and his family.
If I was working how would these things ever get sorted, there just wouldn’t be time. So that was the morning gone.
As per yesterday, had to knock out the cleaning in the PM, but found time to sit down with the child who is still off, and watch some cricket, as we relaxed into the weekend. So not all bad. Can’t help wondering if it had been Tuesday and not Friday, if I’d have sent them back to school today, and what decision we’d have made if I hadn’t been a house husband! I do feel some sympathy for working parents in these situations, but not enough to want to be one.
Slowly calming down.
Jay
No comments:
Post a Comment