To think that Covid has become a convenient excuse for poor service ?

[Mellonsprite]

For some firms (not all) ?
Just come back from a couple of days away in the Uk. Lots of car parks still closed, public toilets not opened, Not many inside activities like museums and castles re-opened yet, the officious-ness of the clipboard wielding all in the name of Covid? The hotel Meal meal (Prepaid) was cancelled at last minute, then acting like refunding my fee paid upfront was highly generous of them, apparently they’d ‘mis-calculated due to Covid’. Neglecting the fact that it left us completely high and dry, unable to speak to guest relations via email or phone. Bars closing at 9pm with staff asking customers can we pay up & leave!

Yep, agree.

YANBU. It's a convenient excuse for them to give. It's the same with companies using it as an excuse to make redundancies that they were planning to do all along.

Yes

NatWest bank on limited opening hours with long queues outside in the rain. No-one answers the phone when you call-email them only and they might reply in a week.

Admiral gave me £25 back but it now takes an hour to get through to them by phone.

I am rethinking which businesses I use based on their actions during cv19. NatWest with a personal account, business account, large mortgage and isa are on borrowed time.

Yes! Virgin Holidays and Virgin Atlantic both taking 120 days to give refunds. Their ongoing reason is that they furloughed the majority of their staff and the remainder are working from home.

I am rethinking which businesses I use based on their actions during cv19

Yes me too, I resent spending my hard earned money with firms that treat you with disdain and don’t even try to hide the fact that customers purchasing their goods / services are a total inconvenience.

@Ilikewinter

Yes! Virgin Holidays and Virgin Atlantic both taking 120 days to give refunds. Their ongoing reason is that they furloughed the majority of their staff and the remainder are working from home.

Virgin owe us about£1000

When we finally got through the guy was clearly watching the football whilst on the call. My DH asked him who had just scored and he laughed.

Risk Assessments made to keep us all safe, HSE requirements for public spaces to be legally carrying out their duties...not as simple as you make out.

I had recently changed my electric and gas meters pre-payment meters from Utilita to Scottish Power.

Reasons being obviously cheaper tariff, I had inherited the prepayment meters, plus inconvenience of top ups, i.e. if I was ill it would be difficult to get to the shop.

Scottish Power assured me everything would be okay 'at their end' and they would 'automatically' switch the meter over to credit as it is a smart meter.

All i would need to do is provide a meter reading.

Day after switch I find out meter readings no longer appear on my meter. So they plan to use estimated readings to bill me.

Person on the other end of the phone thought this was fine, and said 'we can't send anyone out due to Covid'.

Beg your pardon I said. You mean you can now bill me whatever you like and I can't even check on it myself as meter readings don't show on meter. So as far as I'm concerned they effectively lied to me all along.

I personally find that disturbing. I took a reading before the switch just in case. I've made a complaint.

I think banks will start using this period of reduced opening hours and less staff as "proof" that they dont need to keep branches open.
I do 95% banking online but sometimes need to bank cash or cheques for business. Often the cheques are above the limit you can pay in via the app, and obviously I cant bank with cash online. Whilst I would love all customers to pay electronically there are a lot that cant or won't and we cant afford to lose their business.

It is the current catch all excuse. Rather than blaming poor planning, under staffing or people not giving a toss, it can all be pinned on COVID and you’re then the unreasonable one if you say anything.

No RAC the fact that it Your call centre said 90 minutes when they should have said 4 hours is not the fault of COVID. No accountants, the fact you cannot be reached by phone 5 months into a pandemic is not due to Covid. No online retailer, you taking my money, not sending the item and being petulant when I Want a refund is not the fault of COVID.

This! I managed to do my public facing public sector job from home on the first day we were sent home.

But so many private organisations said "they're only dealing with urgent key workers" or "vulnerable customers" right now. Can't be that difficult to set up home based call handlers can it? Maybe easier and cheaper to furlough them and tough luck if anyone needs anything sorting out by something other than a bot

Yes I agree!
Big companies who will no longer accept telephone calls! So annoying.

Absolutely, it's very frustrating. I could understand it when we first went into lockdown and companies hadn't had time to get organised for most of their employees working from home but it's been months now and the technology for effective remote working has existed for years. You can answer the phone and emails from anywhere in the world so Covid excuses for shit service are wearing a bit thin when I'm not paying any less for it.

Yes! DVLA I’m looking at you!!

Absolutely correct Op
I am sick to death of the poor service at the moment. I can’t get a refund for anything

I think that for a lot of companies they were already on the edge, so this has been a way to justify cutting back where they likely would have had to anyway.

IMO Ocado will be gone within months and M&S must be kicking themselves for signing up with them.

No app for four/five months, they’ve now made it available to a select few but it’s fairly evident that whatever they’ve done to it there’s a reasonable chance it won’t be coming back.

Added to which the way they treated existing customers during the outbreak was atrocious.

I was actually going to start a separate thread about it but figured I might as well just put it here...

Yes I agree. I think the furlough scheme was set up too quickly and too many employers are abusing it. It was too easy to let the taxpayer pay their staff when actually there clearly was work for them to do.

The covid excuse is wearing thin now.

Other companies adapted almost overnight and used it as a chance to be more efficient and versatile.

It's really noticeable.

True, I'm trying to get building work done and it's even more of a PITA getting quotes etc

@greengreengrass14

I had recently changed my electric and gas meters pre-payment meters from Utilita to Scottish Power.

Reasons being obviously cheaper tariff, I had inherited the prepayment meters, plus inconvenience of top ups, i.e. if I was ill it would be difficult to get to the shop.

Scottish Power assured me everything would be okay 'at their end' and they would 'automatically' switch the meter over to credit as it is a smart meter.

All i would need to do is provide a meter reading.

Day after switch I find out meter readings no longer appear on my meter. So they plan to use estimated readings to bill me.

Person on the other end of the phone thought this was fine, and said 'we can't send anyone out due to Covid'.

Beg your pardon I said. You mean you can now bill me whatever you like and I can't even check on it myself as meter readings don't show on meter. So as far as I'm concerned they effectively lied to me all along.

I personally find that disturbing. I took a reading before the switch just in case. I've made a complaint.

We had this from SSE - tried to send a very high bill out for gas, despite it being only used two or three times a day for hot water, no heating since March .

When I queried it - ‘oh no, we can’t take a meter reading until at least November and maybe next year even . So we’re just making an estimation and charging you for what we think you’re probably using .’

I think not .

I think a lot of companies are fighting for survival, a lot of staff are worried about their future and everyone is on edge. That doesn't excuse bad service, but it does explain why some places are less welcoming than they would be under normal circumstances. I think we need to give them a little slack.

We had a meal out last night - DS's birthday - at one of the large chains. Service was crap. They obviously have a "one server per table" rule which is fine, but you need to sort out cover when that server takes her break! Food was slow, greeters at the door were sulky, no music because Nicola says it's dangerous, hazard tape everywhere.

Not fun. Won't be back and we didn't leave a tip either.

I tried to phone Sky two weeks ago and they are still only taking calls from people who are shielding. Considering that was scrapped on 1/8 I was not amused 😄 Never got to speak to them and sorted it out myself (it was actually a problem my end but if I had needed to talk to them they wouldn't answer their phone).

Even Jeremy Vine show says they don't many staff to answer calls and to email in? WHY!? Surely they can get folks back in now? Boggling

Virgin Media- one of the worst offenders! They have kept and are keeping their call centres closed, if you call them to talk about your crappy internet or anything, there is a message, six months in, saying due to corona, there's no call centre open. Every other company I have called, pensions company, bank, all of them have call centres operating from home, but not Virgin. Anyone would think they didn't want you to call to complain about your patchy internet coverage...