Which companies actually want to speak to their customers ?

[Hodgehog]

Inspired by another threat and my own experiences recently where I could not under any circumstances get through or even be allowed to speak to a human (one company after I selected the option played automated messages in regard to one particular service which directed me to their website then hung up on me).

As a result I want to make an effort to use companies that allow you to speak with a person/ don’t have you fart around for 20 minutes selecting various options and listening to recorded messages. Except I don’t know which ones they are !

Which companies have you had good experiences with that are like this or which ones should absolutely be avoided ?

Direct Line are good.

Direct line. Right noted.

Actually I do remember a decent one - l'occitane.

OctopusEnergy. I hope they make it…

First direct

So Energy answered after less than 3 minutes and really unsettled me I was ready with lots of jobs to do whilst on a long hold!

RAC car insurance good

Simba dire (although very happy with the mattress once it finally arrived!)

First Direct.... I really rate their customer service. Pre covid a real person would pick up after a couple of rings. Now you wait a tiny bit longer but definitely not more than a few minutes.

That’s two votes for first direct

Second RAC car insurance. Very easy to speak to a person when I was with them a few years ago.

Plusnet, always been able to speak to someone, sometimes a wait but know I'll be able go speak to someone at the end.

O2 are the absolute worst for this. If you do get through to someone guaranteed they will start ‘taking your details’ and then cut you off. It’s absolutely infuriating. It happened to me so many times I actually believe they tell staff to do it.

Don’t try Virgin Atlantic. They had a message on last week saying the wait time was 3 hours!

I managed to speak to Amazon humans fairly recently.

I had my identity stolen recently and had to spend a whole day phoning various banks, credit card lenders, catalogue services, mobile providers etc to cancel and report everything. Can confirm that Very, Sky, Vanquis Bank, MBNA and Klarna were fab - easy to get to speak to a real person and, just as importantly, a UK-based person who properly understood what I was trying to tell them.

Capital One, HSBC, EE and Ocean Finance very poor indeed. Not impressed at all.

I’m certain that it is deliberate to put customers off calling them.

Have to say I’d not had the best experience with RAC - left a woman along on the side of the motorway at night because they were busy. Fair enough. When chap finally came he said he’d been waiting at the services for 3 hours for a job to come in because the call centre don’t pass them over properly.

Nearly froze my arse off.

Landsend are brilliant on customer service. And Orchard Farm who sell special needs pushchairs, they can't do enough to help you. I rang after our pushchair had a fault and they were falling over themselves to rectify it and as quickly as they could.

Thumbs up for Octopus and thumbs down for BA.

Yorkshire building society

Plusnet

Another vote for Plusnet. Had issues on occasion but overall a good company to deal with, usually get through to an actual person fairly quickly (exception being when it's something outwith their control and widespread but that is usually down to an openreach cock up!)

Tesco are surprisingly good

Apple CAN Be good but they have this ridiculous automated cut off thing that limits how long their call handlers speak to you

Avoid like the plague :

Utilita - damn near impossible to get a person and when you do they may not totally understand English

Sainsburys - awful! Long holds, call handlers talk across you etc

I have found Admiral insurance, Direct Line insurance, Tesco Mobile and RAC pretty good.

It goes without saying that Ryanair are the worst.

You can speak to a human at Vodafone. Unfortunately, they are rarely able to help so soon put you on hold to transfer you to someone else. If they pick up, you are likely to be put on hold again. I suspect that the system is set up to avoid resolving anything and send you round in loops until you give up. Dreadful company.

I have spoken to humans at Nat West. Not that it did me much good - they just transfer you to another department, who transfer you to another department ...
It took about 18 months for them to do a change of address.

Hargreaves Lansdown for all your investment needs!

RBS. I had an issue over my date of birth and they were great. I had to speak to a few different people but it was sorted very quickly.

Coventry building society are very nice

Shell Energy very good. You get to actually speak to a real person and not on hold for long.

HSBC. TRULY AWFUL
NATWEST. EVEN WORSE