Time spent having to get basic customer service

[YesitsBess]

I'm bored of the amount of hours it takes me in an average working week to get a (to me) basic level of customer service from big providers:

British Gas, my meter has been out of service since Christmas eve, I spend at least an hour a week talking to an "expert" who tells me I have to pay £178 to get it fixed if I refuse to move to a smart meter. I COULDN'T MOVE TO A SMART METER IF WANTED TO! OUR METER IS TOO FAR AWAY FROM THE PROPERTY.

Sky, I spent an hour on the phone sorting out a minor issue which meant my account had been charged twice. Assured it was all sorted and then got a letter from a debt collection agency meaning another hour on the phone to get it rectified again

First Direct who I banked with for over a decade insisted that I hadn't paid £8.50 to close my account and threatened recovery action, 2 hours on the phone with staff telling me they have no idea why I keep getting the letters but 9 months on they are still coming!

TFL, drove into London for the first time in a decade, registered for autopay Ulez and CC, got a PCN in the wrong name and because it's in the wrong name they won't let me challenge it and I now need to spend hours sorting it out after hours on the phone with TFL staff.

There are more!

I feel like I'm in a never-ending battle with companies where I've taken every possible measure to make sure I don't end up on the wrong end of legal action because of mistakes and yet I'm spending around 3 hours a week dealing with....exactly that. Am I supremely unlucky here?

YANBU. I have countless similar examples from my recent days - it really is too bad.

@Neededanewuserhandle that's it isn't it? Just DO THE THING I AM TRYING TO PAY YOU FOR DAMN YOU!

I hear you OP. Modern life and trying to get things done is bloody exhausting!

@Peterbear thankyou! Even when I try and head off stress I end up with more of it, I had a 16 month war with the bloody Dartford tunnel once 😂cost me £2.60 and SEVENTEEN HOURS OF BLOODY COMPLAINING after bailiffs showed up at my house for something I paid for a year ago.

It's the real scourge of modern life. Noone has any pride in their work any more they just want an easy ride and do the bare minimum they can get away with.

Customer service is mostly a horrible joke at the moment. We are due to remortgage and would like to borrow a bit more to do some jobs so I rang our current lender (Nationwide) to see what they would offer etc. 25 minutes to get through to a human who bluntly told me I was through to the wrong team.

A couple of attempts by her to connect me were unsuccessful so she just laughed and said I’d have to call back. The team she told me to speak to were not an option on the multilayered press 6 if you’ve lost the will to live list. I finally managed to speak to another human who kept making assumptions which were wrong, as well as having absolutely no information about the rate I might be offered or the timescales. For this, I would need to call back and book an appointment with one of their mortgage advisors. No, he could also not connect me or assist with this.

I have given up. We will just go with another lender because honestly fuck that. Plus they want £1000 “arrangement fee”. Aye fucking right.

That's it! Give us 1k of your hard earned money for...what? And press several buttons for the privilege