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!

There seems to be an ongoing pattern of disenfranchising the elderly and the disabled - making it harder for vulnerable people to complain or to withdraw their custom.
Great if you're internet-enabled, but otherwise.....

Customer service in most high street stores and retail places was all just lip service mostly before covid. Now they have the biggest excuse ever to make sure we have to ' take it on the chin' because of covid (with added attitude from some !)

If something goes right dh and I just look on amazement and any decent service we get we tell others! It is hit and miss though.
I've heard of a few places getting rid of people with glee , which is sad. The excuses will go on for a long time to come I'm sure if it. Getting through to anyone has always been a nightmare.
It's all so miserable at times.

Easyjet - holiday booked for May, opted for voucher, issued on 18th of May but not emailed to 29th of June - now unable to use the voucher and refusing to refund. Flights booked for next year - now cancelled route and no communications.

Blacks - randomly send out items they think you wanted not what was ordered, having to chase for everything promised.

Millets - don't send items out then have to launch a massive investigation into why I didnt receive said item - if I was going to try and rip them off surely I would be trying to claim the £99 table hadn't shown up than the £3 lantern!

Fab service - Ocado - always had a delivery, let me use my weekly deliver slot to an alternative address, now on as many deliveries as I want. Very few items missing, out of stock throughout.

Local companies I have done fantastically.

GPs I am beginning to get annoyed with not being open, and a receptionists asking me to shout through the door why I had dared to visit on a very busy street - glad it was my son with a UTI and not myself.

Even worse than poor service, is being charged more because of COVID!

@itsgettingweird

With furlough.

If you didn't need staff because you couldn't run your business fair enough.

But when you have business demands you cannot meet because you've furloughed staff you need them.

So the state are paying for the staff and not getting the services they have paid for.

IMO that's misuse of the scheme.

Spot on.

I’m really struggling with midwives at the moment, I’ve had no number even given to me to be able to contact my midwife. I’ve not seen a midwife for months despite the fact I’ve got complications. It’s really worrying.

@BrightYellowDaffodil I did complain and they seem to be taking it seriously but time will tell. Driver also swore at me.

I would hate for it to happen to anyone else so I do not intend to let it go!

If a company can't provide the service required they shouldn't be selling items - neither of my refunds have been due to me changing my mind, but due to them either not sending goods or sending the wrong items!

I do think though that local stores may have done well out of this. I follow a few on the local facebook page and they've all tried to be helpful - offering differing opening hours, delivery services etc. It made it easier when supermarkets had queues around the block.

I certainly discovered a couple of places that I can walk to for various items.

My sister runs a group of McD franchise, staff are enjoying furlough so much they won't come back to work, mostly youngsters living at home so no commitments. They've all been told that new people are being employed and when they decide it's "safe" for them to come back there will be no job. Govt paid furlough ends soon, I'm sure more people will be back to work then. Daughter and her husband, both their departments in local government have had all staff WFH so same service to customers as if they were in their office.

And PAYE too. Still waiting for SMP funding for clients back from February.

That's shocking!!! Hopefully the client has enough to cover the SMP but what an awful situation to be in. HMRC decided to hold onto £5k out of a tax rebate for one of mine, no logical reason why!

@Namechangr9000

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.

When I suggested that I might not want to use mobile banking and isn't it bad news for jobs etc... to a teller at Barclays, she smirked and said she had other things to do anyway. Fine, I'll just fuck off if I'm not wanted. Not been back in since. The staff dont seem particularly bothered about us going in.

I agree op. My mum's gp surgery has been disgusting. My mum has asth ma and she was due an asthma review. It took her over 2 hours to get through on the phone so that she could get a telephone appointment with a nurse and they couldn't even make the effort to say what ti me the nurse would be phoning. Then the nurse got really snotty when my mum missed the call. Obviously the nurse expected my mum to talk to her over the phone whilst doing a crap on the toilet at the same time. The worrying thing is that my mum thinks that the telephone system is brilliant. I just hope for her sake she doesn't get really ill as she could end up in hospital before she gets anywhere with the doctors.
I meanwhile have been trying to change my sky package with no success. I went on their website and clicked on the necessary page only to recieve the message page not found. Before covid i used online chat to speak to sky as it was a ball ache trying to get through on the phone what with having to speak to an automated voice which couldn't understand a word. When i tried to use online chat to speak to sky last week i got the message they were only speaking to people on the phone. Yet i cannot get through on the phone. Now i am left paying a ridiculous amount of money and there are a few channels i don't want. I bet sky are making a bomb due to people not been able to get the best deals on their sky package. Maybe i should try again and tell them that i am vunnerable lol.

It definitely is an excuse for "can't be arsed" with some businesses.

I hope the ones who have tried really hard to make things work and provide good service, rather than just use Covid for an excuse for their even worse than usual service, come out of it well.

I'm still waiting for my car accident from before christmas to be closed off. The other insurance company say they've sent the payment a month ago, mine say they dont have it.
Phoning up to chase it "well they dont have an office open yet due to covid so we're having to work on emails, ill ask someone to try and contact them but it might take a few months to sort out."

Meanwhile i need to reinsure my car next week and having an "open claim" still on my account even though I was not at fault (got rearended) is increasing my premium by 25%.

Absolutely.

At this stage too many companies use this to justify lack of customer service, poor facilities and for ripping people off by not processing things like refunds and complaints.

What I am doing is making sure I never use again in my lifetime any shop/restaurant/airline/utility company that tries to abuse the situation.

@DirtyDripSpout

Even worse than poor service, is being charged more because of COVID!

Well actually, I find there more acceptable than crap service. Overheads are higher, customer numbers are lower, I think price increases are inevitable.

If you didn't need staff because you couldn't run your business fair enough. But when you have business demands you cannot meet because you've furloughed staff you need them
So the state are paying for the staff and not getting the services they have paid for

Exactly - but with public services such as LAs it's even worse than that because the jobs are already funded and they're double dipping into the furlough fund to lay off people who could be used elsewhere

And don't anyone try to say "the councils will have to pay it back" because we all know that'll never happen

I keep seeing posts here with "I've been furloughed but i don't want to go to work"

Quite so, and if people don't want to work any longer that's fair enough ... but in that case step aside and leave the job for one of the many who are losing theirs

Agree about local businesses who've worked like crazy to keep going though, even delivering where they normally wouldn't. I'v always tried to use them anyway but will be stepping it up after this

Puzzled public sector local government jobs didn't use furlough scheme. They couldn't. It was only for private sector for the exact reason they lay the wages in the budget (more complicated but yswim!)

I'm public sector and we've been paid 100% even when up our work has been less (first 3 weeks due to nature of role).

I realise how lucky I have been and so personally I've made an effort to make sure I support food banks etc for those not as fortunate.

Regarding banks, we had a problem with our local branch of HSBC long before Covid kicked off. The interior of the branch was completely redesigned so that it had only one working counter. I'd love to meet the overpaid idiot who thought that was a good idea! I had to go into the branch most days to pay in cash for work, and if I were to add up the number of hours I've wasted spent over the years waiting to be served, I'd probably get extremely angry.

On one occasion, when I finally got to the head of the queue after a 15-minute wait, I asked the cashier why they only had one counter. Her response? "Well, if we had two counters, the customers would expect them both to be open." I kid you not...

@ShouldWeChangeTheBulb

And my local pool has about 5 slots a week for families which all book up immediately and lots of adult only swims that are all available. Why? They just don’t like the kids from the local estate.

Yes - this is the same for my local pool. Kids can swim in an hour slot Monday and Tuesday lunchtime and Saturday morning. When I look online pretty much every afternoon has completely empty adult swimming slots. How is this fair in summer holidays! I suspect they need more staff on for the kids which is why they offer so few slots.

public sector local government jobs didn't use furlough scheme

I obviously can't speak for others, but I assure you they did round here; the guidance may say that LAs "aren't expected" to use the furlough scheme, but sadly they've not actually been prevented from doing so

Today’s example of officious behaviour, just taken dd 11 for a swim, booked online in advance, swimwear on underneath clothes ie following the rules.
After 10 mins DD says she wants to get out, apparently the lifeguard indicated to her she had to swim continuously with no stopping. I didn’t see that and kind of dismissed DD.
5 mins later the lifeguard waits for me and says, ‘due to social distancing’ she isn’t allowed to stop in a lane she must keep swimming, I said ok fine, she can do as she’s a good swimmer- better than me, but right now there’s only us in our lane, the life guard repeated yeh but if it was busy she wouldn’t be able to stop like that due to social distancing.
I said, ok right, but she can today as it’s not busy, there’s only us here ?!! In the end I took the path of least resistance as she wanted to have the last word to warn me what I couldn’t do if circumstances were different whilst simultaneously saying it was ok to carry on. Power. Trip.

Definitely poor service - the council are blaming covid-19 on me still waiting for home adaptions (after 18 months) even though it turns out they have not looked at my case since November and in January I spoke to them and they promised it was moving forward.
NHS have had me on waiting list for major surgery over a year I'd breached waiting times well before covid-19 but they still can't tell me how long my wait will be.
Having said that had excellent service from gp throughout, local businesses and my home insurance company.

Yes JOHN lewis v disappointing