Bring back humans!
- Answering services which disguise the "speak to a human" option until you've been through 20 different options
- Companies who ask you for your id number at the start of the call, and then again when you've been transferred (stand up Dell)
- Companies who employ foreign staff to answer the phone who don't speak fluent English
Examples of particularly poor service experienced will get a special mention on these pages.
From Andy Brown - November 2006
Pitney Bowes don't get this entry for one specific thing (although they don't answer their phones well) - just for sheer, consistent bad service. Here are some of our favourites:
- Setting us up with a credit limit of copyright500 without telling us, then happily taking an order for more than this, not sending out an invoice and then charging a fee for exceeding our credit limit PLUS a daily interest charge at a rate money-lenders would be embarrassed at.
- Charging a copyright3 transaction fee and copyright3 reset fee for every postal meter top-up, and not allowing us to do bulk top-ups.
- Using what must surely be one of the world's most confusing accounting systems (we set aside about 3 hours a month just to try to reconcile our account - and we only have one meter!).
From Andrew Gould - October/November 2004
Bought a computer from Dell at home. Rang up to try to get monitor replaced after it failed. Took ridiculous number of calls to get through - still no new replacement arranged. Got impression Dell home computers technical support is staffed by one person who is usually on their tea break.
Finally got through and was about to arrange a replacement to be sent, when line cut off somehow. No one called me back to continue the conversation. Help!
Scottish Power From Andy Brown - November 2004
Trying to transfer our gas/electricity account to Scottish Power. Got sent an email with a web address (no automatic log-in included in this). Went to site, entered details ... and got a message saying that we had "too many power accounts" (I think that means we want gas AND electricity). Shown an 0800 number.
Rang this - got told to call a different number. Rang this 0845 number - several options to press to get through to a human being. Eventually got through, and lady on other end said that her computer was down so I would have to rejoin the queue (everyone else's computer was up). Why did she answer the phone?
