To think that there's no such thing as Good Customer Service anymore?

[BeachBlondey]

Constantly frustrated by utterly shit (or non existent) customer service. I swear, that back in the days before mobile phones and the internet, back when you could actually talk to someone, that customer service was so much better.

I am so sick of phoning a help line, only to be told to find my answer at www.company.com, before being cut off. Obviously, I have tried resolving my issue on-line, before resorting to the help line, but now can I please, speak to a human being, instead of being cut adrift with zero resolution?

Just a few examples recently :

A) Was given a WOWCHER for Christmas, for a meal and overnight stay at a hotel, for two people. Go to book it, and the hotel is fully booked until the voucher expiry date. Try to call Wowcher. You can't speak to a human, you get directed to open a Whatsapp chat. So, I go ahead and do that, but you just go round in a loop, with a chat bot, with no resolution. So, I call the hotel, and they can't deal with it - apparently only Wowcher can "help". There is NO help.

B) Want to upgrade my phone with Virgin. Get to the final check out page, and I get an "oops" error message. So, I ring them, only to be told that there is a "note" on my account, preventing the transaction going through. I ask what it is. They say they don't know, and that only the back office can remove it. They promise to ring me in a few days to resolve. They never ring me back. So, 4 days later I call again. Get the same story. Promise to ring me back in a few days. They never ring back. So, I call them back, just for the whole same thing to unfold again. Upshot is, I've gone with someone else, and they've lost my business.

C) Upon checking my elderly Dad's bank account, I see that the RAC are taking £34.50pm. No idea why. I call them, and after being passed around several departments, it turn out that for some reason, they have resurrected an old vehicle recovery plan, and have taken £138 from his account over the past 4 months. I ask for them to cancel it and refund him. Their answer...we can give you £46 back. By cheques only, even though my Dad can't get to a bank to pay it in. What? Why? The answer is "that's just what the computer says, so to get the rest, you'll have to log a complaint". So we do that, and they promise to ring me back. Yep, you've guessed it, no fucker has rung me back.

D) I want to open an ISA with Barclays. You can (supposedly) open this on-line. So, I try to do this. But...they ask me to log on to their App with my Barclays sort code and account number, which obviously I don't have because I am not yet a customer. WTF? Finally got through to a human, who gave me a direct number for my local branch, which is not any such thing, so I end up going off in to a loop of numbers, none of which can actually help me.

I have so many more examples. I feel like Customer Service has royally gone down the pan, and it' SO frustrating! I honestly cannot remember the last time anything worked seamlessly.

Anyone else?

Trust a woman to get it right, and in a timely manner! 😜

Glad I'm not alone, but Gah....things were so much better before every little thing had to be done on-line. How the elderly cope is beyond me. It's the time these things take. Hours and hours of faffing, because there's no human to talk to and no common sense.

I had this with vodaphone. So many options none of which cover what I need and every button you press it tells you to try online. I did end up shouting into the phonei "I just want to speak to a person" which did work ended up with a lovely helpful chap. Such hard work.

Totally agree. We have an ongoing problem with my pension with Aviva. Took early retirement last year and started looking at paperwork and spotted an error meaning that my contributions haven't been indexed for the past 12 years. Totally their fault- they admitted this.

We have called no less than 10 times in the past 11 months. The script is the same each time- they assure us someone from billing will expedite and they will call and it will be resolved within ten working days. They keep agreeing that it is very poor of them that it hasn't been sorted to the extent that we were given £300 in compensation- 5 months ago... is it sorted? Nope- so the last time we called them we said if it wasn't resolved we would be complaining to the regulatory ombudsman and they assured us it would be sorted... still nope!

Seriously AVOID them- they are beyond incompetent!

Agree with you completely, what I've noticed is basically nkw everything is fobbed off for the customer to do themselves. Fill in this form and basically do everything that someone from the company would have done. Very sneaky! I'm sick of it

I agree they're absolutely fantastic

I get completely what you’re saying. It’s so hard to find contact numbers/web chat with some companies. The lack of ability to contact some companies is ridiculous. And I agree that there is a degree of cs that should be provided automatically.

However, I do think that the ‘customer is always right’ motto has gone a step too far. I would in a retail job and the amount of entitlement that we have to deal with on a daily basis is actually insane. I’m a fairly happy person and I rarely give bad service, in my opinion, but sometimes a customer rubs me up the wrong way and puts me on a course for the rest of the day. Just remember that you don’t know what is going on in other peoples lives.

I work for a company that seems a lot larger than we are but it is just me on the phone.

If I’m on another call when someone else tries to call through they’ll get a message like ‘high call volume, please hold for operator’, the recording kicks in here - I’ve heard some wonderful rants I’ve learnt new swear words whilst people are waiting 😁

The problem is nowadays it is so hard to get to the solution you want. Automated lines make you go round in circular so when you finally get to speak to a human your patience is wearing thin.

some companies don’t care as they will always have customers or hire agency staff that aren’t trained properly

Yes I understand but it seems there are always higher call volumes than normal nowadays

i.e. we need more staff

I desperately need to speak to the prescription payment line, every single time I call they tell me there's too many callers and cut me off, my issues can't be solved online. I'm completely stuck and can't afford to buy my prescriptions

I think often the elderly cope better. My aunt told me the trick to automated services is to not press any buttons or answer questions and they transfer you to a person straight away. I tried it with the bank and rather than go through long circular menus And security I got put through straight away.

Previous poster mentioned RAC being rubbish. I agree. In January DH drove my car through an unexpected flood on a road, and it damaged it underneath. Limped it into the side of the road, and waited for the RAC. And waited. And waited some more. After 2 hrs they decided to arrange for us to be taken to a hotel, rather than leave us in a hailstorm on a Cumbrian moor. The taxi got lost, and despite being local had to be talked through the route by me. Eventually got to a hotel for a cup of tea and after 4 hrs! RAC came to the hotel, and then a very grumpy RAC man couldn't take two of us back to the car. DH went back with him, and eventually the car was declare driveable, so we carried on. The RAC said they would very generously refund £10 in refreshments. I'm still waiting for it. Also, my all singing all dancing Home Recovery Policy stops existing when you go through flood water apparently. I was invited to comment on my experience in two words on their site. A Tad Vexed were the two I plumped for. Outstandingly shit, and I won't be renewing.

The hotel, on the other hand, were great. If anyone is going past The Rusland Pool hotel, on the A590 near Greenodd in Cumbria, they were beyond great.

Always found customer service pretty much non existent in this country with a few exceptions. Not sure it's become worse.

@SpongeBobJudgeyPants Dauntie is onto something. I did that with Virgin last week, actually I just kept pressing random buttons, and got through to a being.

In Virgin's defence (typing with nails being drawn) their engineers are excellent. They really do stay on the job until they've sorted the problem. Plus, the ones I called in last summer after I had cut the cable with an electric tree saw hardly took the piss at all. Just agreed the cable should've been more robust

Always found customer service pretty much non existent in this country with a few exceptions. Not sure it's become worse.

@mondaytosunday I was just going to post about a company with great customer service but then saw your post... and realised they are in Ireland.

These people (who also make really fabulous sustainable clothing using textile suppliers who use best practices in terms of zero use of toxic chemicals, fairness and transparency.) have FANTASTIC customer service. As well as lovely clothing. I have several pairs of their yoga pants and the fabric is amazing.

It probably isn't that surprising though that a company that prides itself on its ethical supply and sustainability is also very nice when it comes to customer service. Anyway - shout out to Kokoro for their customer service.

kokorozenwear.com/

Yes, I've been trapped in several automated 'customer service' infinite loops recently. In every case, I've ended up realising I'm beaten and have lost money. Worst offenders: Evri, Nectar, some garden centre that should never have attempted an online shop.

These days I'm so staggered by actually GOOD service that I go overboard with the positive feedback! It really shouldn't be like this: effective competence should be standard.

Some fully automated systems are blatantly designed to prevent customer contact: Evri's the worst offender I've encountered, but many others come close. I buy more than I ought to from Amazon because, with orders fulfilled by Amazon, service is impeccable. If a business wants to automate, that's the way to do it!

i feel your frustration OP.
Not in uk but i have problems with my internet, but not my phone (both from same company)
So i call, and the recorded message says you can get help from their website do i want to get the link sent. I always say no, and when i finally speak to a person they ask why i don't want the link.
And every time i have to explain that a) i'm phoning about my shitty internet (yet again) and b) as i told them the billion times before, where i live the mobile internet coverage is non-existant. And please note that on my file and stop asking me...

I don't think "customer service" as a whole has disappeared, I think it's the "front end" that has collapsed virtually everywhere. Once you get past the "gatekeeper" whether it's a receptionist, call centre phone advisor, or whatever, you usually get to someone who's actually helpful and can deal with your problem! The difficulty is getting past the gatekeeper.

Just been trying to get my car booked in for a specific problem, not a routine service. By the way the service receptionist dealt with it, you'd think I'd been requesting they did open heart surgery! She just clearly didn't want to book it in - said it may take "several hours" and could easily cost a thousand in labour alone, and that the part was usually hard to source and may have to be imported! I gave up on her and phoned straight back pressing the different number for the parts dept - got a lovely sounding helpful bloke who told me it usually took a couple of hours to fit and checked his computer to give me the price of the part and that he could get it delivered in within a couple of days - he said he'd have a chat with the service manager to confirm labour cost. He phoned me back an hour or so later to confirm, and said that he'd put me through to the service receptionist to book it in, having put a note on the system as to the part required and the time requirement - it was the same women and she was really huffy that I'd spoken to someone else! Talk about attitude problems!

And I believe a lot of those "higher call volumes" are from customers who have to keep calling back because their problem/query wasn't properly dealt with the first time they called.

HMRC I'm looking at you! They never do things right at first attempt, if they do anything at all, it's usually wrong, meaning repeat calls!

It's not always about needing "more" staff - I believe it's about needing "better" staff who are capable and know what they're doing. Just filling an office with "anyone" causes more harm than good - just look at NHS inefficiency!

Totally agree. Customer service is awful a lot of the time these days. I'm ready to swing for British Gas. I just want to be able to submit meter readings and check account balance which shouldn't be hard but I get a constant error message. Told I'm part of a new billing system so need to use the app. App says I don't exist. Told I can use online chat and they'll submit readings for me. Great but then I can't see that it's been inputted correctly and can't keep a track. I just want access to my account. Shouldn't be hard.

However some customer service is amazing. I ordered some dog food recently and they rang me to see how dog was getting on with new food and reminding me she might need less as it's richer than previous food.

I also had fab service at a local cafe recently. They were incredible and made such a fuss of the dog.

Yep, totally agree. Have recently bought a new car. It was from a main dealer, used but still expensive at nearly 25k. got it home and realized the car mats that were in there were missing. Spoke to dealer who said it is there policy not to supply mats in second hand vehicles, so they put them in for the test drive and then took them back out again.... like seriously, how tight can you be???

For me I think a notable difference seems to be lack of anticipating the next problem/question and helping with it. I don't know whether this is due to the advisor not being bothered or lack of training etc.

An example of what I mean: I phoned a building society and asked if I can make deposits over the phone. I was told, simply, no you can't do that. Now to me, the obvious next question is "so how do I make deposits?" I would have been saying, "no, you can't do it over the phone but you can do it by X or Y."

Another example: I rang my phone company asking about roaming charges because the website was ambiguous about the country I was going to. Once established which 'list' the country was in, I asked a general question about how it works - "so does this mean X?" The answer I got? "No." That's it. No follow up 😂 I had to say, "right, can you explain what it does mean then, please?"

I sometimes feel like you have to ask the exact right question before you get the information you need, even though they know what the problem is/what you're looking for.

Best - AEG appliances. Superb customer service. No time wasting on phone calls, they answer within a minute and will replace your appliance with a brand new one if the old one can't be repaired and is under warranty. Great 5 or 10-year warranty too.

Worst - Miele. Considering how expensive their appliances are, their customer service is crap.