Dear readers, I've noticed from my stats page over the times that my most popular blogs tend to be about getting married, or some dickhead company I've had the misfortune of dealing with.
My yodel blog still gets hits every day and my cash generator one was a big hit by my lowly standards.
In that case this one should be a fucking record breaking entry.
I have 2 items with Three, my mobile 'phone and my mobile broadband. I've come to the conclusion over time that having both is somewhat excessive and I plan to cut stuff down. So I decided mobile broadband, you gotta go.
I don't know why I was expecting this to be easy in any way, but I did, so off I went. I call type in my mobile bb number, press 1, then 2 then 2 then 3 then 2 then 1 then 5 then 4, OK an exaggeration, but you know what I mean. I then wait patiently, being regularly assured my call was very important to them, whoever they actually are, while listening to popular modern numbers such as, 'Moves Like Jagger' and other pap I don't know the name of.
Eventually I get through to an Asian (I'm guessing Indian) lady, start getting through the call, including giving the number I've already typed in, and then I say those words, "I'm looking to cancel my mobile broadband.". Next thing the phone is dead, I do that weird, repeating hello down the line like that'll resurrect the connection or something, thing that people do, but no, the Three rep has hung up.
I'm now pissed off.
I ring back up, another 42 button presses, a telephone number entry and I'm back on hold. This time it's about 12 minutes and I'm through to a cheery chap. I know what to expect at this point, I'll try to cancel, assuming he doesn't hang up, he'll offer me something to keep the business, I'll say no. Job done.
He starts into the sales thing, he offers me discount, better service(!), a free netbook, I say no, just cancel please, which he finds funny and starts pissing himself down the phone, I ask to speak to a manager, I'm told there isn't one, then she's on another call, I go whatever... cancel. He carries on the sales work for longer, I reiterate the cancellation request any number of times, until he tries one too far and I demand the manager.
After one hell of a wait (phone call getting expensive anyone?) I get his manager... a man... no idea what happened to the woman on the other call. At a guess either a freak headset accident or I'd say she never actually existed. The manager gives the very standard complaints type start, I know it as I've probably done it before in my time, lots of pretended empathy, completely transparent of course, but bravo for the effort squire. Then he goes into the same sales spiel as the first guy did, only offering me more stuff.
I reiterate my desire to cancel and cancel only, saying I no longer want the service (if I could get rid of my phone with them I would too) he carries on, mentioning, free netbooks (again), iPads, discounts, offering me cash at one point to stay with them. After 15 minutes of explaining, the signal is crap and I don't want it any more, him offering more, engineers to call me, signal boosters etc, I'm feeling physically tired just from speaking to these numptys but he's appeared to have agreed to just cancel it. That's when he confirms, what he's going to do, to give three the chance to give me better service, he'll put the discount through and if I want to cancel in future I could and that was my choice.
At this point I wanted to just fly to Mumbai/Bangalore or wherever he was and slap him firmly over the head with something heavy. I repeat again, in the simplest terms I can. C.. A.. N.. C.. E.. L.. and he agrees, as long as I'm sure and after 35 mins on the phone I'm back to the first guy who explains the cancellation situation. He does so and it's exactly what I was expecting. Then he has one more go.
Un-fucking-believable.
He offers me more data for the same money.. I've never used my current amount, but he offers me 15Gb instead of 5. I'm rude at this point, I explain the heavy handed sales techniques or him and his 'manager' (just as likely to be the dude sat opposite him) use are crap, obstructive and I didn't appreciate the time I've been kept on the call. He apologises once again and offers me £5 as a goodwill gesture. £5... I say ok but I will be complaining further.
Oh and believe me I will.
45 minutes to do what should really take about 5. Cretins everyone of them.
I'm expecting a call off them tomorrow to try and change my mind or something, I'll just fart down the line and hang up.
Showing posts with label Poor Service. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poor Service. Show all posts
Wednesday, 1 February 2012
Tuesday, 26 July 2011
Lloret rocks, alpharooms suck
Right, it's got to be said, these blogs are turning a little into the consumer section on that's life. But I don't care, it's my blog and I'll write what I like so there :p
Firstly, I had a delightful time in Espania. Lloret is a lovely place, not really targeted at the Brits so much any more, or maybe not at this point in the season anyway. But the hotel was decent the staff was nice, all in all it was a lovely little trip.
The only downside was... well getting home at the end. We noticed the night before that Alpharooms, who we'd booked everything through, had made a mistake with the return transfer, which would have left us stuck for a very long time in the airport. So we rang up to arrange, the first woman, unhelpful but gave us another number, the second one took their time, seemingly couldn't work their own systems (all while we should have been partying on our last night out there) then eventually gave us a new time and pick up point. To be sure, we passed the phone woman to the receptionist to write stuff down due to slight difficulty understanding the Spanish accent. She even drew us a little map, how nice!
We ate and drabnk and were merry! Eventually after sorting these people out, it can take the shine off the last night of a holiday (actually a honeymoon) when you have to sort out stuff people have cocked up on your behalf.
Following morning, checked out after a nice breakfast (gotta love a bit of all inclusive buffet style grub!), at least 50% of us remembered to get their wrist band snipped, (the other 50% may have kept it on til we were in a party on the sat night) and we trekked over to the Guitart Monterray to get picked up (We were staying in the Guitart Capri!). Well we waited for the bus, and waited and the due time passed, and we got a little(!) stressed and waited and then phoned.
Yay! We'd been given the wrong pick up location and the bus had fucked off without us. No choice, panic stations, ran back to hotel, asked the still helpful reception staff to get us a taxi and we taxi'd it back to the airport in time... and at a cost of €55, we were lucky we had enough cash on us. We also tried asking the Spanish taxi driver for a receipt, I may as well had been asking a Martian for a table tennis ball, so we gave up and went for the plane.
Obviously this annoyed me, it was alpharooms fault for booking the wrong thing and then the coach company (NTIncoming) for giving the wrong info when we tried to fix alpharooms mistake. So on return, I wrote a nice email ready for alpharooms stating I feel they should cover the taxi fare, refund the unused transfer and maybe a little sorry would be nice. I went to their site and guess what. No email address to complain to.
I asked if anyone knew one on twitter and the company themselves contacted me to say no. I mean honestly, how backwards a system. Fair enough if I was supplying receipts or something, but I could even scan them!! I just wanna complain! It's obstructive and obviously designed to make complaining as hard as possible. Poor show. But complain I will. Maybe they'll even read this who knows!
In other news today, series 5 of The Guild starts on XBOX Live! (Thursday for other formats) well I'm assuming that's the case as it's the US release schedule and it should be pretty uniform.
Firstly, I had a delightful time in Espania. Lloret is a lovely place, not really targeted at the Brits so much any more, or maybe not at this point in the season anyway. But the hotel was decent the staff was nice, all in all it was a lovely little trip.
The only downside was... well getting home at the end. We noticed the night before that Alpharooms, who we'd booked everything through, had made a mistake with the return transfer, which would have left us stuck for a very long time in the airport. So we rang up to arrange, the first woman, unhelpful but gave us another number, the second one took their time, seemingly couldn't work their own systems (all while we should have been partying on our last night out there) then eventually gave us a new time and pick up point. To be sure, we passed the phone woman to the receptionist to write stuff down due to slight difficulty understanding the Spanish accent. She even drew us a little map, how nice!
We ate and drabnk and were merry! Eventually after sorting these people out, it can take the shine off the last night of a holiday (actually a honeymoon) when you have to sort out stuff people have cocked up on your behalf.
Following morning, checked out after a nice breakfast (gotta love a bit of all inclusive buffet style grub!), at least 50% of us remembered to get their wrist band snipped, (the other 50% may have kept it on til we were in a party on the sat night) and we trekked over to the Guitart Monterray to get picked up (We were staying in the Guitart Capri!). Well we waited for the bus, and waited and the due time passed, and we got a little(!) stressed and waited and then phoned.
Yay! We'd been given the wrong pick up location and the bus had fucked off without us. No choice, panic stations, ran back to hotel, asked the still helpful reception staff to get us a taxi and we taxi'd it back to the airport in time... and at a cost of €55, we were lucky we had enough cash on us. We also tried asking the Spanish taxi driver for a receipt, I may as well had been asking a Martian for a table tennis ball, so we gave up and went for the plane.
Obviously this annoyed me, it was alpharooms fault for booking the wrong thing and then the coach company (NTIncoming) for giving the wrong info when we tried to fix alpharooms mistake. So on return, I wrote a nice email ready for alpharooms stating I feel they should cover the taxi fare, refund the unused transfer and maybe a little sorry would be nice. I went to their site and guess what. No email address to complain to.
I asked if anyone knew one on twitter and the company themselves contacted me to say no. I mean honestly, how backwards a system. Fair enough if I was supplying receipts or something, but I could even scan them!! I just wanna complain! It's obstructive and obviously designed to make complaining as hard as possible. Poor show. But complain I will. Maybe they'll even read this who knows!
In other news today, series 5 of The Guild starts on XBOX Live! (Thursday for other formats) well I'm assuming that's the case as it's the US release schedule and it should be pretty uniform.
Monday, 11 October 2010
Complaining - The only way to get your way?
Firstly, I've been a very lazy blogger. I've let things such as no Internet and doing lots of work on a house stop me!! Honestly where are my priorities!
As people who have read one of my earlier blogs would know, I've had some trouble with the ISP for my previous address, namely Plusnet. All those who give a damn will now love to hear I have cancelled with them, by avoiding their ludicrous cancellation rules. How did I do this? I complained that's how!
This lead me to think, I've dealt with numerous companies over the years, and they seem to have vastly varying levels of service. When I've come across the worst of this service and they refuse to do even the most basic of reasonable requests, I've gone straight through to complain.
My question is, should it be that way?
Why do basic service level employees of some companies stick so rigidly to obstructive practices? Personally I don't blame them, a human can only act within the freedom they're given and in the majority of companies I'm talking about, common sense and free thought is not encouraged.
Plus net are an example (sorry to bang on) their staff could have solved my problem in 20 seconds with a quick phone call, but they refused. Eventually their complaints manager (James Bailey, very helpful man) solved the situation with a 20 second call. Could not somebody at another level have already done this, they prob spent longer than that writing my response telling me they couldn't call. They wasted their time, my time writing the complaint and the Complaint Managers time looking into it and contacting me.
A bit of common sense at the start and things would have been done much much faster.
There must be 1000's of examples every day where customers have to complain about blatantly unfair procedures to get any joy. If companies a) treated their staff as things other than trained monkeys or b) considered the customer over whatever obstructive procedure was in the way in the first place they'd be more efficient and maybe they'd have happier customers.
Of course, there are financial benefits in being disruptive, if someone knowingly overcharged 50,000 customers and only 20,000 complain, they've made the extra on 30,000. Which very well may make any costs involved in handling the 20,000 complaints worthwhile. For example, if they delay had taken me into an new month with Plusnet, they'd have pocketed my £15 happily.
My advice, take nothing that seems unfair as read, kick up a fuss and you may get some joy. I've done the complaint handlers job before, and if most companies are like my employers, once it gets to complaint, the staff have the freedom to make fair decisions and the desire to do so also.
TTFN - Expect another post later, I'm brimming with ideas today!
As people who have read one of my earlier blogs would know, I've had some trouble with the ISP for my previous address, namely Plusnet. All those who give a damn will now love to hear I have cancelled with them, by avoiding their ludicrous cancellation rules. How did I do this? I complained that's how!
This lead me to think, I've dealt with numerous companies over the years, and they seem to have vastly varying levels of service. When I've come across the worst of this service and they refuse to do even the most basic of reasonable requests, I've gone straight through to complain.
My question is, should it be that way?
Why do basic service level employees of some companies stick so rigidly to obstructive practices? Personally I don't blame them, a human can only act within the freedom they're given and in the majority of companies I'm talking about, common sense and free thought is not encouraged.
Plus net are an example (sorry to bang on) their staff could have solved my problem in 20 seconds with a quick phone call, but they refused. Eventually their complaints manager (James Bailey, very helpful man) solved the situation with a 20 second call. Could not somebody at another level have already done this, they prob spent longer than that writing my response telling me they couldn't call. They wasted their time, my time writing the complaint and the Complaint Managers time looking into it and contacting me.
A bit of common sense at the start and things would have been done much much faster.
There must be 1000's of examples every day where customers have to complain about blatantly unfair procedures to get any joy. If companies a) treated their staff as things other than trained monkeys or b) considered the customer over whatever obstructive procedure was in the way in the first place they'd be more efficient and maybe they'd have happier customers.
Of course, there are financial benefits in being disruptive, if someone knowingly overcharged 50,000 customers and only 20,000 complain, they've made the extra on 30,000. Which very well may make any costs involved in handling the 20,000 complaints worthwhile. For example, if they delay had taken me into an new month with Plusnet, they'd have pocketed my £15 happily.
My advice, take nothing that seems unfair as read, kick up a fuss and you may get some joy. I've done the complaint handlers job before, and if most companies are like my employers, once it gets to complaint, the staff have the freedom to make fair decisions and the desire to do so also.
TTFN - Expect another post later, I'm brimming with ideas today!
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