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!

Toilets being closed also. Oh you need a wee? Sorry pregnant lady, you'll have to pee behind a tree. Because of covid.

I'm emailing my MP and have emailed the Today programme - someone from the ?Board of Trade was spouting about how great it is to have the option to work from home.
Service is just crap just now.

I'm just waiting for my GP surgery to erect the barbed wire fence and have the gun towers installed. It would match the level of service they provide and their attitude.

Phone and say you actually need to see a Doctor and you are treated like you've committed a crime worse than murder.

@Totickleamockingbird

Curry’s PC World. Horrid, horrid service.

To be fair, it was dismal before covid, but yes, a lot worse now. We went yesterday. Long queue outside but virtually empty inside. You have to wait for a staff member to be available to escort you to the area you need and they stay with you to ensure you dont look at anything else. Then when you decide what you want, they dont have it in stock. Currys will be the next bricks n mortar closure.

Why are fitting rooms closed? If I have to take something back to the shop I'm making a second trip with all my germs and microbes. Is the item I took home and returned cleaner than if we'd only spent five minutes together in a cubicle? If that's the case maybe they should clean their cubicles.

I've found doctors to be fantastic throughout the last six months. Nurses (sorry if you are a lovely nurse!) And support staff less so. I was in with crippling back pain and couldn't physically move but it was up to me to sit on a bed pan and wee, and to get off the trolley and walk through the hospital. No wheelchairs. Covid.

The shop where we have to get school uniform is running behind on orders and now won't answer emails or call apparently this is due to the unprecedented volume of orders and covid. At one point they said you couldn't go to the shop and had to pay £6 for delivery again because of covid.

I'm not sure how covid has increased the orders when it's the only place to buy uniform and has been for years

Yes - Land Registry are being very slow and impossible to talk to the person you need because of working from home due to Covid.

Trampoline manufacturer/seller - closed all phone lines due to Covid (surely 6 months down the line you need to open up again?!) . Sent me a faulty trampoline 4 months ago and still no reply to emails/replacement part. Bad service blamed on covid.

Yorkshire Building Society - open 9-2.30pm Mon-Fri. What use is that to the millions of people back at work Mon-Fri 9-5?? Does Covid prefer to attack on Saturdays so you have to stay closed now! So I have to take a day off work to access my money?

I could go on...

Yorkshire Building Society - open 9-2.30pm Mon-Fri. What use is that to the millions of people back at work Mon-Fri 9-5?? Does Covid prefer to attack on Saturdays so you have to stay closed now! So I have to take a day off work to access my money?

Banks have, for a long time, treated their customers as a huge inconvenience and try to pretend everything is possible online. I'm quite adept at online banking but there are some things that cant be done online. Not to mention people that either prefer not to, or cant use online banking.

How does having staff in for half a day help anyway?

Had a hire car booked with Budget and needed to get in touch to ask something. Phone lines still completely closed. No live chat. No e-mail response. No social media. So no way of actually contacting them. Great work guys.

[quote LucyTamedOgres]@Friendsoftheearth Amazon & Dominos Pizza fan here too they have been wonderful throughout![/quote]
Not wonderful if you are a coeliac. They've stopped the gluten free pizzas from the beginning due to covid and they can't tell me when they will start again. I asked on Twitter last week and got the same auto response that they trotted out in March. Not great for us as my autistic, coeliac son won't eat any other takeaway pizza and it's his birthday next month (we always have Dominos on his birthday).

Marks and Spencer have also used Covid as an excuse to reduce the wheat free range. Item's are very slowly reappearing. Apparently coeliac's don't need much choice in a pandemic but other people still do.

@lalaroo

I work in a call centre, and it's not as cut & dry as you think. For example, we have 3 UK based call centres & 1 based in SA, another based in India. At the moment, both overseas call centres have been shut down due to covid, and they're desperately trying to implement home working in those locations. In the meantime, it means that all calls are UK based only, and we only have a set amount of advisors due to call centre closures. We are unfortunately prioritising calls, so if you state you are vulnerable, you are pushed to the front of the queue. I think alot of the time people are calling when things are non essential, or can be self served. Whilst I appreciate it's easier to talk to an agent over the phone, please be patient and bare in mind how many times we are swore at, spoken down to, and quite honestly treated like dirt from members of the public. I appreciate unless you're on the inside, you simply wont know what's going on. But from my companies stand point, were here, answering calls as normal, but were operating with much less staff

But likewise, some people HAVE to phone because the firm's website "self service" facilities are down, such as Sky, BT and Virgin - I've tried to use all three in the past few weeks and not been able to do a damn thing on line due to a succession of "you can't do that right now" or "bad page" webpages. All three have taken down their live chat feature, so you can't use that either. So the only option is to phone - in all three cases, that's taken 2-3 hours to get through to a human. Only BT could actually do what I wanted them to do. With both Sky and Virgin, the person I finally spoke to couldn't do it - both saying that I needed a different dept and put me through - only to be stuck in another queue for another 2-3 hours until I finally gave up.

So it's not the customer's fault that they're phoning if the company's website is out of action is it?

Marks and Spencer have also used Covid as an excuse to reduce the wheat free range. Item's are very slowly reappearing. Apparently coeliac's don't need much choice in a pandemic but other people still do.

Businesses are not charities. They will sell products which make them a profit. They aren't obliged to cater to every subset of the population if it's not profitable for them to do so.

Just as businesses as not charities, customers do not have to use the like of Pret either to keep people in employment.

@lalaroo

I work in a call centre, and it's not as cut & dry as you think. For example, we have 3 UK based call centres & 1 based in SA, another based in India. At the moment, both overseas call centres have been shut down due to covid, and they're desperately trying to implement home working in those locations. In the meantime, it means that all calls are UK based only, and we only have a set amount of advisors due to call centre closures. We are unfortunately prioritising calls, so if you state you are vulnerable, you are pushed to the front of the queue. I think alot of the time people are calling when things are non essential, or can be self served. Whilst I appreciate it's easier to talk to an agent over the phone, please be patient and bare in mind how many times we are swore at, spoken down to, and quite honestly treated like dirt from members of the public. I appreciate unless you're on the inside, you simply wont know what's going on. But from my companies stand point, were here, answering calls as normal, but were operating with much less staff

I tried to do what I needed online. The chat said there wasn't anyone available and with poor WIFI my DH and I can't do our own jobs effectively, so the only option was to phone.

I've been spoken to really badly by two BT advisors yesterday (not even at peak pandemic stress). If I spoke to people at work like that, I'd be disciplined.

I was really taken a back by how I was spoken to. Barked at and patronised for enquiring about my slow and intermittent WIFI. I'm fairly techie, so could answer the snarky comments, but feel sorry for customers who wouldn't have a clue.

YANBU.

Covid has been around since March and all businesses have had plenty of time to adjust.

It's not good enough and it adds stress on top of stress.

@lalaroo

I'm not saying it's the customer's fault at all. However, we have to accept that its not as simple as it once was. In my case, I'm back to back handling cases & do all I can to work as fast as possible.

But you said "I think alot of the time people are calling when things are non essential, or can be self served." so you were saying it was customer's fault.

@lalaroo

Sorry that happened to you, middlager. I can honestly say I do not speak to my customers in this way. Hopefully you'll get a better experience next time. If not, complain.

Thanks - your reply restores my faith.

I wish I had spoken to somebody like you and I appreciate not everybody is like them!

Why the lack of gluten free? Is it the flour they can’t get.

I rang the doctor's surgery 51 times yesterday and could not get an answer.

I was actually wanting to add extras to my Virgin Media package. I tried online over several days and got through the webpages until confirmation stage and then got the "we cant do that right now" page. Same happened day after day.

I tried phoning them over several days only to end up in the queue being told how important my call was and how they'll get to me shortly. On about the 10th attempt, it was actually answered by a person. I went through what I wanted and thought we were getting there, only for him to say he couldn't actually confirm it (presumably he hit the same webpage error message) and gave me a number to call the "specialist team dealing with my package". When I hung up and looked at the number, it was the same bloody number I'd spent days trying to call. So I just gave up and won't be adding to my package after all.

I wonder how much business/profit these firms are losing by being so useless at the moment.