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RE: Hanging on the telephone

Sarah of the Dead — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 11:04:36 GMT

BigT: wow. That sounds ... like it would be funny in hindsight, but probably really stressful while it's going on!

My boyfriend managed to get a bill recently for electricity provided to a flat [I]next door[/I] to a flat he'd lived in two years ago. They somehow got the numbers and names and accounts muddled up. Cue much, much confusion.

RE: Hanging on the telephone

BigT — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 20:27:07 GMT

Had a strange one last year Sarah. My mother-in-law got an electric bill from Scottish Hydro Electric and came to us with it as she had already paid her bill. As she has a pre-pay meter and always keeps her receipts, we thought this would be easy enough a problem to solve, so we phoned SHE to find out how there was a second bill. The answer completely floored us. According to them it was for the second meter! My wife and I went to the cupboard and informed them that there was definately no second meter, but the lady on the other end of the line insisted that there was. She said to to look underneath the other meter and it will be there. I told her, "there is nothing underneath the meter, it is an empty space, but she insisted that it must be there. After about ten minutes of this, she finally agreed to sending an engineer round to read this ficticious meter.

After about a week, the engineer turned up, and sure enough, he could not find a second meter! He told us he would inform SHE, and that should be the last of the matter. guess what!!!!!!!!!!!

A week later, the bill returned with the threat to cut off the electric, so we phoned up again. I think we must have got either the same lady, or her sister. We went through the whole process again and no ammount of telling, nor pointing out that the engineer had been made the slightest difference. In fact, she even suggested that the engineer was wrong, or we had hidden the meter!! (Flash to us ripping meter of cupboard wall, replastering and painting, including aged effect, and dashing of into the night carrying our stolen meter giggling uncontrollably - I think not!)

Anyway, about a week later, another engineer turned up to disconect her from the electric. After vainly searching the house for the meter, he finally admitted defeat and phoned the company himself, just to get the same run arround we got! to say he was angry would be an understatement!

However, after a couple of months had passed, the problem was finally resolved. The missing meter was actually within the door to the upstairs flats, which had a separate entrance to the ground floor flats. It seems that it was for the lights to the stairs and the bill was supposed to be shared equally between the residents of the upstairs flats. So did SHE ever apologise? Not likely, instead they decided to try to go through the whole process again 3 months later! How had they managed to get it right for decades, then make such a ridiculous mistake without reason?

Sorry it is not directly about computing, but I thought it might give you something to smile about!

Chow for now.

RE: Hanging on the telephone

LittleJohnSW — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:47:52 GMT

BT are a**holes. My Fiancee discovered that her account was in credit by over £100. When she called them to get it reimbersed, one bloke in not so many words said she would have to whistle for it. She then demanded to speak to the persons superior and was then told that she had it back the previous month, which was untrue.

Only after being told that they had 28 days to refund the money, with interest applied at 5% above the rate of BofE interest per month or face court action and a report to Ofcom did they finally say they would efund her the money. Thankfully, we'll be leaving BTs phone service and finding someon else.

RE: Hanging on the telephone

theBishopp — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:56:29 GMT

[quote]BTW the call to Sky was on a 0870 number so you can imagine what my telephone bill looked like[/quote]

NO! BAD! Don't use 0870 or even 0845 numbers! Look here - [url]http://www.saynoto0870.co.uk/[/url]- and use one of the 01/02 num,bers, or in some cases, 0800 numbers! Dopesn't cover every company in britain, but covers all the major ones, and many many others... :)

RE: Hanging on the telephone

Sarah of the Dead — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 10:37:51 GMT

Wow. That's spectacularly bad. I'm sorry you had to go through that!

RE: Hanging on the telephone

Fixer109 — Fri, 30 May 2008 15:46:10 GMT

Hi! Sarah

I know it's a little late (6 mts I think:) ) but I thought you should know of my experience with Sky Broadband.

I tried to get through to them for a problem I was having and was on hold (believe or not) for 1hr40 before someone answered. I then spent over 1/2hr with a call center advisor (I use the term loosely - as I don't want to swear on the forum) who insisted on going through her crib sheet from top to bottom without of course resolving the problem. Finally after all this time she decided to 'escalate' the problem and put me through to a REAL engineer.

Within 2 mins we had solved the problem (it was a fault at the exchange and BT were working on it, but believe or not they only work till 8pm then it's tools down till am the following day though they have to pay the ISP's for lack of service) Finally the service was back up the following morning.

If it wasn't for the low cost of the service or the unlimited download ( they don't even warn you until you've reached 500 Gigs in 1 month) I would gladly change providers.

BTW the call to Sky was on a 0870 number so you can imagine what my telephone bill looked like.

Kind regards and keep up the good works at the tower.

Robert

RE: Hanging on the telephone

D-Dan — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 19:45:40 GMT

It's a shame the review didn't include the Inland Revenue Accounts Office. I'm an accountant - and shudder at the thought of having to phone them.

RE: Hanging on the telephone

MMchief — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 11:06:57 GMT

poor old Harlequin :D

RE: Hanging on the telephone

Teafie — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 17:17:59 GMT

Micro mart subscriptions, can I get through. Only kidding.:P

Super cool avitar there MMCHEIF, Guess we will not be seeing him on the latest unreal, I do find the new Unreal a bit of a let down. lets hope the modders can kick it into touch.:D

RE: Hanging on the telephone

MMchief — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 12:59:55 GMT

I rest my case...

Last night i call BT to get an issue sorted out about a charge they had placed on my bill that should not have been there, (this was the 2nd time of calling about this issue)
First of all i'm waiting in the queue for 28 minutes then get to speak to someone, then got transferred due to the agent not having the correct privilages to access my type of account, so i spend another 10 minutes on hold, then get to speak to someone else who seemingly cannot help with my query so she has to escalete the call to someone higher, which means another 7 minutes on hold, then get to speak with someone else.

I explain my problem to her and she seems mystified as to what i'm telling her,

"oh i don't know if we can resolve this, i'll have to report this to another department, they will call you back within 48 hours"

yeh right i won't hold my breath, i'm still waiting on a call back that was going to happen within 48 hours from the 3rd of Febuary...

So all in all 64 minutes on the phone and the situation is no further forward, thats what i call quality customer service :P

RE: Hanging on the telephone

MMchief — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 14:30:45 GMT

Should be an interesting read, i'm looking forward to it :P

RE: Hanging on the telephone

Sarah of the Dead — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 14:11:44 GMT

You'll see the results of my investigation in this week's issue. :)

RE: Hanging on the telephone

andydods — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:34:13 GMT

Being in the process of signing up to O2 broadband, I have had to call customer service a couple of times. Only had to go through the automated option once (only 2 options anyway) and have been connected to an assistant within 10secs.!!omg!! It was obviously a call centre in Scotland (which is nice), and the numbers are freephone on a landline and freephone on an O2 mobile. Completely impressed, especially after experiencing Pipex "customer service"!?

RE: Hanging on the telephone

MMchief — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 11:38:34 GMT

BT have to be the absolute worst, it doesn't matter what day or time of day you call you can expect to be on hold for at least half an hour average, before you actually get to interact with a real human being, and then even the human being part is debatable! :ermm:

RE: Hanging on the telephone

Mitch — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 15:12:41 GMT

Oh and Virgin Media, if you have a problem, and you will have a problem, have now decided to charge their already paying customers 25p/pm to ask for help....now that is really nice. You always get asked to reboot the PC and STB at least once...funny that!

RE: Hanging on the telephone

Mitch — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 15:02:02 GMT

Oh and here is a cracker for you, if you want to do some research:

Ring Sony and ask them how much a new Vaio laptop keyboard is and if they will send you one out, to fit yourself! You will faint at the reply!

RE: Hanging on the telephone

Mitch — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 14:59:10 GMT

Wanadoo - Orange. Absolutely shocking. I have never sworn over the phone before, but they managed to drive one out of me:

I had a problem with my broadband, it wouldn't connect after years of service, paying top whack, and they just kept on saying "ring us back on such a day and we will give you an update, this must be a BT fault" I did this a few times and they would then deny all knowledge of the previous phone call and not only that, everytime I rang back I would get the scripted; "right I need you to try something for me.....can you empty your temporary internet files folder" ARRRRGGGHHHHHH. I kept saying "NO, I am sick of this, sort it out, it's not my PC's that are at fault, nor your modem, nor my router, nor microfilters, nor internal wiring, it's you or BT and my contract is with you, not BT, so go away and fix it --- and YOU ring me back, you are a communicaions company for heavens sake and it costs me money to ring you, and you then forget what we are talking about everytime I call you, and nothing gets fixed." and do you know what they said...."we have no outgoing telephone lines here, so you have to call us!!!!"

In the end I demanded a supervisor and (by this time I was screaming down the phone, and I mean literally screaming) told them they were a useless bunch of B-Words and to cancel my service. I moved to BT, had the same problem initially, they sent an engineer out (although not to my home) and it has worked fine since.

Pathetic! I will now never move away from BT because if there is a line fault, they are the only ones that can fix it, and the other ISP's just seem to get pushed to the bottom of fault list.

RE: Hanging on the telephone

Bruce R — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 14:36:27 GMT

I can't help feeling that it's all a question of people becoming numbers instead of names, whether they be customers (clients) or support team staff, whilst 'lies, damned lies and statistics' surveys can just make it more impersonal ! 'I'm a name, not a number !'

RE: Hanging on the telephone

alex3410 — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 12:12:46 GMT

you should do one about email's and how long it takes them to respond :p EA stated 24 hours and 4 days latter it finally comes :P and i would hazard a guess at the fact that people are using email more and more as they have busy lifes etc? possibly i dont know :P

RE: Hanging on the telephone

theBishopp — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 11:11:00 GMT

edit this wanders a little off topic, but is relevant, comment at the bottom explains better! :)

The one thing I can recommend with BT is try to escalate it to a manager. Not always possible, as the manager will have between 6 and 20 people, all doing the same! get the right department and just insist on speaking to one. You may find if it is the first call about the issue you won't be able to, as BT introduced some new software that logs all calls and the reason for them (although staff are meant to put the details in themselves).

The biggest problem with BT is the way the staff are treated. Things are getting worse and have been doing so for sometime. when your job is sitting taking calls all day, and you have not only your manager watching and listening to what you do, how long you take doing it, and just exactly how you are measuring up to quite often arbitrary "benchmarks" and targets, but also people sat remotely monitoring you and emailing/calling your manager if you spend too long on a call for example, it becomes stupidly pressured and stressful. This is why the turnover of staff in call centres is ridiculously high. Unfortunately for the customer ringing in, there may be a huge queue before the phone is answered, but you may get through to someone who has simply had enough of abuse from all angles, be ot verbal form customers or the nastier, more insidious form BT utilises...

Personally, I was agency staff for over 2 years, and things are even worse for them. You do exactly the same job, in some cases much better than people on BT contracts, and get much lower pay, much fewer benefits (by which I mean pension, sick pay, staff discounts etc), and get harrassed by the agency a lot more.

I could never recommend BT as an employer to someone, even though the money is very good for call centre work. They really do treat their staff as numbers, and do NOT care about their welfare at all. Any measures in place to support staff really does seem to be for the appearance of the thing, and to comply with regulation, and not because they genuinely want to help.

I realise I sound a little like a bitter ex-employee, but please, ask anyone who has worked for them, in fact ask as many people as you can, including people who still work there, and i gaurantee you the bulk of responses will be the same as mine.

[/rant]

I seriously don't think things will ever improve until the staff are treated better, without the moronic people (management) who seem to think the only way to get better results is to harrass the staff more. I cannot speak for other Telecomms companies, but I do know a chap from Talk Talk had a problem with one of his customers converting from BT to them, and as I had dealt with the customer several times throughout their time with BT, she had a direct number for me. The talk talk chap called me, and between us we got it sorted, even though we both got a bollocking from our managers for "dealing with the enemy". I did it as I liked that customer, and she had had an absolute nightmare of a time with BT, and the Talk Talk guy was pretty cool once we got talking, and also my manager at the time was a fool. I admit I would have been less helpful for a rude person, as it is very difficult if not impossible to empathise with someone calling you all the names under the sun, however justified they may feel.

Perhaps the moral of this is that there is another dimension to this debate, which is often, if not always overlooked by those writing about it - the treatment of the staff. Please, no matter how angry or stressed you feel, the person on the other end of the phone almost certainly is as well. Try and remain polite, and explain clearly what is up (and if you have had to stand in a phone box for an hour and a half, as you will probably find they will take a mobile number to call you back on) and if you are having no joy ask for a manager, and keep insisting.

I hope that helps a little...

RE: Hanging on the telephone

MSL — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 10:01:41 GMT

We lost both the phone line and the broadband connection early in December last year. After standing in a BT call box in sub zero temperatures for an hour and a half, my Wife was in tears. Only to be told by the uncaring creature on the other end of the phone; 'If you get cross with me then I shall terminate the call.' In for a penny, the call was terminated after being informed where and which direction to shove their attitude. A communications company that takes 90 minutes of being on hold before being greeted by a snotty attitude?

RE: Hanging on the telephone

Fuzzy-Felt Bloke — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 23:05:20 GMT

[quote]Virgin Media is pretty much a no-brainer[/quote]

I've dealt with them in the past and I've had no problems, in fact for the size of the ororganisation thought they were quite good.

Tom :)

RE: Hanging on the telephone

theBishopp — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:51:38 GMT

[quote][b]FreakShow! (23/01/2008)[/b][hr][quote][b]jhsanders (23/01/2008)[/b][hr]Ironically, I've never had anything but good experiences with Virgin Media as well. Presumably I'm not allowed to say that here :D[/quote]

Yes, but I remember you also told them that you were a journalist for a very highly regarded magazine. Once you say that, it's gold paving all the way to the solution of your problems and treated like royalty. Us mere mortals don't got that trick ;)[/quote]

maybe we should try it? claim we are researching an article on service levels of IT/Telecomms companies... If they pursue it, tell them we are freelance writing on spec... wouldn't exactly be a lie, as you could certainly write an article and send it in to the ED on spec... probably wouldn't get printed, unless it was REALLY good, but hey :D

RE: Hanging on the telephone

FreakShow! — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:26:26 GMT

[quote][b]jhsanders (23/01/2008)[/b][hr]Ironically, I've never had anything but good experiences with Virgin Media as well. Presumably I'm not allowed to say that here :D[/quote]

Yes, but I remember you also told them that you were a journalist for a very highly regarded magazine. Once you say that, it's gold paving all the way to the solution of your problems and treated like royalty. Us mere mortals don't got that trick ;)

RE: Hanging on the telephone

jhsanders — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 13:14:33 GMT

Openreach are fabulous. Phone call to TalkTalk about failed ADSL, woman down a hole in the rain, ADSL working again. Brilliant!

Ironically, I've never had anything but good experiences with Virgin Media as well. Presumably I'm not allowed to say that here :D

And ooh that House of Horrors thread was mine LMAO

RE: Hanging on the telephone

Bruce R — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 12:59:59 GMT

BT 'Support' are the worst.

On another continent, might as well be on another planet. Doing an excellent job of generating phone call revenue by painstakingly sticking to rigid checklists and quite unwilling to accept that problems may exist outside those checklists. Non-English English doesn't help. Good at issuing threats that high charges will be levied when problems aren't confirmed by UK-based technicians.
Only offset by some still dedicated, competent UK based technicians, often under the OpenReach logo and out and about in what can now be quite appalling weather !
The BT organisation phone follow up can be a shambles. (Took several days to re-connect an exchange link after finally repairing a faulty road cable.)

Orange 'support' was a close-run second, suffering from similar problems, and not helped by using old ex-French scheme equipment, nearing end-of-life.

(I'm now with a different phone and Internet Service Provider, with new cables and equipment which really helps.)

RE: Hanging on the telephone

Ian Osborne — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 12:35:19 GMT

Less-than-welcome customer service
As previously moaned about on the Micro Mart forums...

DABS and its inflexible delivery rules:
[url]http://forum.micromart.co.uk/Topic213620-44-1.aspx[/url]

The View-Tek TV aerial saga:
[url]http://forum.micromart.co.uk/Topic203117-44-1.aspx[/url]

PC repair man steals components and over-charges for a simple job:
[url]http://forum.micromart.co.uk/Topic194195-7-1.aspx[/url]
(talking about a TV show, now preserved on YouTube - see links at the foot of Page Three)

RE: Hanging on the telephone

Ian Osborne — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 12:00:20 GMT

When I first joined Pipex about four years or so ago, I had a problem setting up. I rang their customer support, got through straight away and was given crystal clear instructions and settings. They worked. Two days later, a Pipex representative called me to double-check everything had gone OK, which I thought was excellent customer service. Stick with the problem until it's finished, and don't move it out of your 'in' tray until you know everything's fine.

ETA: If you use this, make it clear that since Pipex was sold to Tiscali, the internet has been full of people with tales that suggest customer service has gone down the pan.

I also had a good experience with Mac reseller Jigsaw24. I bought an external hard drive, but when it arrived, the FireWire port was faulty - it worked fine when connected by USB, but wouldn't function properly with FireWire. I rang Jigsaw24, and a sterling individual called Ravi talked me through the issue, trying to help me get it working. Alas it didn't, so realising it must be a faulty drive, he sent a courier to my work address to pick it up. The drive was fixed and returned to me in around a week. I don't blame Jigsaw24 for selling me the faulty drive - this could happen to any company. It's how it's dealt with that matters, and Jigsaw24 worked very hard on putting the problem right. Respect due!

A little later, I'll post some less welcome experiences... :(

RE: Hanging on the telephone

Sarah of the Dead — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:38:05 GMT

Sadly, solicitors aren't really within our remit. Hope everything gets sorted out soon, though.

RE: Hanging on the telephone

bigdaddy — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 07:37:51 GMT

Typical for solicitors Tippers. I could write a book about the problems of our last move. The solicitor finally went to gaol for stealing his clients' money. The sting in the tail was, so did the one I had to hire to sort things out afterwards.

As for the gas, one guy I must have spoken to 50 times sent an engineer out to have a look, just to get me off his back.

RE: Hanging on the telephone

Tippon — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 22:53:05 GMT

[quote][b]bigdaddy (22/01/2008)[/b][hr]British Gas. I spent two weeks for four hours a day trying to get them to admit my Daughter's house was connected to the gas main. The previous owner had five gas appliances working when he left.[/quote]

Did you get it sorted in the end? I left some advice for Tom in this post that should help if your gas company are being useless:

http://forum.micromart.co.uk/FindPost224102.aspx

P.S. You want some bad service, try my solicitors office. I'm buying a house with my girlfriend and we've been phoning the solicitor at least once a week for about 6 - 8 weeks to find out what's going on. We've been told that they're waiting for all the searches to come back so that they can draw up reports and get us in to sign the contracts.

Our financial advisor warned us that over the xmas period, everything slows down, so we were expecting a wait. We were told that the searches should finally arrive last week, and this week we would be signing everything. My girlfriend phoned the solicitor last week and was told by her secretary that she's on holiday for a week, but don't worry, someone else will look at it so we don't get delayed any further.

My girlfriend phones up bright and early yesterday morning to make an appointment, only to be given a load of excuses, and told that no-one's been able to check them! I had the day off today, so I phone up ready to kick some a$$. I get told that the searches have all come back and they have the contracts ready. They were planning on ringing us later on in the day to book the appointment. Ok, I think, whoever my girlfriend spoke to yesterday obviously either made a mistake, or convinced someone to get their backsides in gear, so everything's now great :) Or Not...

My girlfriend gets a call from the financial advisor today. The mortgage company have been asking him to chase us up as the solicitors have told them that they've been waiting for us to contact them about the contracts since xmas! I'm fuming! If it wasn't for the fact that I just want to get in the house now, I'd consider taking legal advice about the way they've delayed us :angry:

P.S. Sorry, that turned into a bit of a rant then :)

RE: Hanging on the telephone

Phitore — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 22:08:34 GMT

Agree with British Gas, they gotta be the worst ever.

On a more I.T. note, Overclockers UK have been good delivering but a nightmare to get hold of.
I've left messages on their answer machine (they never answer the phone) without a single reply.
I find the D.V.L.A. easyer to get hold of by phone, and they make British Gas look good.

RE: Hanging on the telephone

FreakShow! — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 20:03:13 GMT

Not sure if you only want the worst, but my recent experience with Dell is good. You can be talking to someone in under a minute flat :)

RE: Hanging on the telephone

bigdaddy — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:40:18 GMT

British Gas. I spent two weeks for four hours a day trying to get them to admit my Daughter's house was connected to the gas main. The previous owner had five gas appliances working when he left.

EDIT also take a look at this thread about NTL/Virgin.
http://forum.micromart.co.uk/Topic164549-44-1.aspx?Highlight=NTHell

RE: Hanging on the telephone

theBishopp — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:33:08 GMT

hehehehehe having worked for them in both residential and business sales, BT has periods where it really amazes me they manage to retain *any* customers... typically the period after xmas, through to around easter, wait/queue times rocket, and more specifically Mondays are the worst day to call them (although opening on Sundays has reduced that somewhat).

In business, we had customers come through on a pretty much daily basis who had been either waiting for well over half on hour (an hour and 40 minutes was the record for one of mine), or passed around numerous departments as no-one knew how to deal with their query...

Hanging on the telephone

Sarah of the Dead — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:26:35 GMT

I'm planning a feature on customer service and wondered which companies you guys generally have the worst experience with? Virgin Media is pretty much a no-brainer, but what about other broadband providers? Or online shops?

Also, if anyone's had any really really good experiences with any company, I'd like to know about those, too.

Cheers!