The strains and strife of so-called 'customer service'
Customer service. Is this the biggest misnomer in 21st Century language? When it comes to big multi-nationals it appears so. All I wanted was to upgrade my phone. Not too much to ask surely, from a phone company. One that had emailed me reminding me my phone was eligible to be upgraded and offering me a host of too-good-to-be-true packages.
So I called them. No problem, they said. It'll be with you in a couple of days, they said.
It was not.
Three weeks and several calls later, I had a delivery date.
Great, I said, handing over an extra £10 to ensure it came before I had to go to work, thus avoiding the pain of having to arrange for someone to be in the house for 12 hours in case it turned up only for them to miss it when they popped to the loo.
So I waited.
And the time came to go to work. But there was no phone.
More calls were made and an anxious 'customer service' operator finally assured me the phone would be delivered later that same day, the £10 would be refunded and my complaint would be addressed.
One out of three wasn't bad. The phone arrived. But the £10 refund didn't. And there was no attempt to make amends for my inconvenience.
Again, a series of phone calls were made, fobbed off by staff reciting the company line probably from a laminated sheet.
No sincerity. And certainly no service.
I gave her the benefit of the doubt and took her at her word, only to have to make another phone call and only to go through everything again and only to be told, we have no record of your complaint.
I eventually had an email from the delivery company saying my complaint had been investigated.
They were terribly sorry but a refund could not be made, because the computer said the delivery had been made within the time allocated.
Despite my anger at being told I was lying, and at spending the best part of several days on the phone and being fobbed off at every opportunity, the most annoying thing about the whole episode was the jaunty tone of that final email. It was littered with exclamation marks.
My response began: "Thanks you for your email!!!!!!" and went on to explain that taking money for a service that is not fulfilled and then allowing the system to record the service was fulfilled, making a liar of the customer, might be seen by some as fraud and I would be seeking advice from Trading Standards on the issue(!!!!!)
Within 24 hours I had an email saying the £10 had been refunded. Customer service at last, sadly prompted only by those three little words; 'fraud' and 'Trading Standards'.
And no exclamation marks.
