I sympathise, most people I speak to at the larger pension/life firms are often of little practical help to their customers or representatives in my recent experience.
10, 20 years ago, even just pre-covid, there were some firms who routinely provided much better and complete levels of service than others and they were more likely to get the business as a result.
However I’d struggle to recommend one on those grounds now, on calls the knowledge and experience of the person at the other end are usually both at a very low level which is not a good start but more often than not, it’s their lack of willingness to take a next step, investigate an issue further and/or put into action some kind of plan to move forwards which is a mix of the bewildering and frustrating. A real ‘computer says no’ mentality. I struggle to understand why so many people seem so content to perform such a half arsed job in their working day.
Yep thanks for the empathy just returned to work this morning first phone call of the day comes in 15 mins before we open, we answer it. We sell gas cylinders and we deliver during a normal week, only one of us in each day this week so can’t close shop. Had my head blown off for poor customer service for no delivery although posted on website etc and that we were going to lose the customers business although they had completely the wrong gas bottles for exchange! Apparently our customer service is rubbish although I recognised the voice from over a week ago,and the same conversation took place then. New Year just round the corner…
I’m not sure that all the big companies are bad. I have just given in to BT’s request to transfer my Broadband from BT to EE. In terms of equipment and service the transfer has been fine but in respect of admin and billing poor. As usual the transfer systems has been put on line before being properly tested.
Having said that, I have had to make a number of calls to sort matters out and each of them has been answered promptly, directed to the right department and the issue corrected with great understanding and courtesy. It’s not all negative.
As an aside, I think the points made regarding being polite and understanding when making contact are spot on. I find it works.
They insisted that after I had stopped working for a charity that I was the only person allowed to tell them there was someone new. Hugely inconvenient for me but their bureaucracy insisted that had to happen. I think they are more or less state sponsored and so it’s a bit of a public sector mentality with no idea that the customer could be right
On a slightly different note Nest was incredibly painful if you made a mistake - a nightmare to get errors fixed
The best customer service I’ve experienced was with Tag Heuer. They were just brilliant.
All things can go wrong and we know it. Barring examples where someone/something doesn’t turn up for an important event (i.e. wedding), for me it’s not the time that becomes an issue, it’s the lack of communication. A company not responding is the worst thing they can do.
Started getting disconnections from broadband at the end of the week which may have been due to the horrendous wind/rain.
Spoke with my ISP’s tech support (Zen) late last Friday afternoon as the connection was down (typically re-establishing itself during the wait in the queue to talk to someone).
They suggested the router I was using was quite old and possibly failing so they’d send a replacement out which would arrive in 4-5 days. It actually arrived just before 10 am the next day via DPD which was pretty impressive at this time of year.
We had quite an extended conversation about the pros and cons of more expensive full fibre based on my usage stats, and although I’ll probably go that route at some point soon there was no push to migrate as my connection speeds are excellent/near maximum for FTTC. The new router will also apparently allow me to use my existing corded phone when the PSTN systems are phased out in the next year or so.
Connections have been failing frequently since Friday so I’ll try and muster up the enthusiasm to install the new router later today which will involve getting to the socket behind a Kallax unit in the study.
I’m also with Zen Internet and their customer service is excellent which is one of the reasons I went with them. I’d rather pay a little more for a better service and having someone who knows what they are talking about at the other end of the line.
Not too long ago they diagnosed a fault with my WiFi, tracing it to interference from radar (aeroplanes etc). Apparently this is very uncommon but typically I was the one it affected. I think they blocked certain channels being used on my router, anyway whatever it was they did I haven’t had the problem again.
I have to wonder if the older ADSL filter or maybe the wall wart PSU for the older one may have been on their last legs.
Hopefully it was the older router, or at least if it’s due to the line/weather maybe this one will re-establish the connections better.
Just exploring the menus - lucky I had a port scanner to find the LAN address for it as it’s not one I’d have guessed. There seem to be some interesting features to explore which may be quite common these days, but weren’t available on the older Technicolor.
Seems slightly snappier loading pages, I’m hoping that the gigabit ethernet ports might be a step up should I try it as a basic NAS.
It’s been going for years and is well built, simple and very fast. Yes, the name is stupid and the packaging is stupid. Zen have a strange deal in the UK with this box. No idea why. I’ve had one for about 3 years and it instantly was better than the other Netgear garbage faffy trash that I had before. Endless glitches, drop-outs and glitchy updates. With the Fritz, no problems at all and faster.
One entity that deserves a special mention (here at least) is local government. They like most public services have long forgotten who they actually work for.
Highly similar thoughts I’d suggest from many of us in the UK.
It’s not the actual employees doing the nitty gritty work, rather those making policy and trying to force agendas of so many kinds on the residents.
As for planning/road changes I think many of us have also given up raising objections or replying to proposals as it’s futile even when you have very good counter arguments.
I had the misfortune to meet our local council General Manager. He’s of the opinion that we (rate payers) are whingers. The arrogance of a man that’s on $650k per year was staggering, he like most of the administration he manages would struggle to get a job in the real world.
