Whilst working towards joining everyone in a patriotic, holiday mood this Jubilee bank holiday weekend I suffered another disappointing encounter with a major British company, who invest heavily in a carefully cultivated image of cutting edge technology and customer service.
My experience was somewhat different!
I was contacting them to advise of our change of address and to cancel our service. This has involved several phone calls over the last few weeks, being passed around many different departments, placed in several queues, asked repeatedly to press buttons on my phone and to give my account number. In total, I have clocked up over 2 hours on the phone!
When I have been lucky enough to speak to a real person they have refused to confirm a conversation by e-mail as this is ‘against company policy’. This means that I have no record of the conversation or any confirmation that they have understood my needs as their customer.
It also turns out that when you need to cancel a service you have to notify the Sales department – now who would think to do that?
The penalty for not realising that as well notifying the ‘billing’ department when I needed to notify ‘Sales’ is that I get charged another week for not giving notice. Of course, the person in the billing department who had all the details, not only didn’t tell me to contact Sales, but apparently can’t communicate directly with the Sales department!
I’m left feeling that the company in question just don’t care about the service they provide, the amount of time customers have to spend trying to communicate with them and their own inadequacy when it comes to sensible processes and information sharing. Their philosophy appears to be that the customer can just pay for their inefficiency.
What a shame that a business that should be showing the world how Great Britain is, merely reinforces our reputation for comedy and farce – I don’t think even Basil Fawlty could get it so badly wrong!
I’m about to go and toast the Queen with a Pimms or two – now surely that’s something we Brits can be proud of!
Wishing everyone a great Diamond Jubilee celebration and thank you, Ma’am for your great example of customer service.
Gill