General levels of service going downhill

[aawcmon]

I will accept that i'm grumpy right now after having to deal with my umpteenth issue today as a result of organisations not doing what they said they would. Over the past few days, i've had to

1. deal with Issue with local garage not releasing car after repairs because someone hadn't done right paperwork, took 3 days to resolve
2. issue with DD's university registration because someone had filled in incorrect date on their database, despite us highlighting it to them 3 times in person! Still not resolved.
3. Virgin media....don't get me started, i can't keep having the same conversation over and over with them to get a service disconnected.

Everything just feels so bloody hard right now, even basic stuff. I appreciate resources are tight everywhere and people are providing a service on a shoestring (myself included) but why is it all so hard!.

Rant over

People not returning calls when you’ve tried and tried to get in touch. We’re waiting on information about a car accident. No one is returning calls.

We have a complaint with the ombudsman after some appalling financial mismanagement. Now we’re told they’re so far behind it’ll be a year. It’s already been a year.

I think it's been this way since covid

Nothing has really returned to previous standards

Getting really tired of hearing “we’re experiencing a higher than usual volume of calls right now.” No you aren’t. That message is on every hour of every day you’re open. You have a normal volume of calls but you laid people off over Covid and you refuse to hire enough people back to run your business.

DPD pretending they had 'tried to deliver but no one was in' but it being clear from all our cameras that they had simply driven down the road and taken a picture of the house from the inside of the van. Then online chat simply full of platitudes but basically saying 'sorry but stay in tomorrow again and tough luck if he does it again tomorrow because that is still counted as the second delivery attempt'. No chance of talking to a real person either - just online chat with what I suspect is a bot.

Ugh, yes yes and yes. Everything feels shite, service automated where convenient for the company but NOT for the consumer. I.e. you can order everything you want online, but as soon as you want to return something not fit for purposes you can expect a 3 hour phone call 🙄🙄

My latest bug bear was a car insurance policy which the company setup on autorenew but with a stupidly high premium. They took the payment a week before the renewal and made it nigh on impossible to cancel, despite the fact they advertise themselves as having a self service 24/7 type portal, but oddly the option to opt out of their renewal doesn't exist online. They then wanted a £35 "setup fee" for the policy that they forced on me. I argued and argued but they gave no shits, just hiding behind their t&cs which surprise surprise i hadn't read in detail. Grrrrrrr I'm getting angry again just thinking about it 🤪

We were saying this today!
Everything is hard work and less efficient than a general years ago. Even going for meals out or shopping is just less enjoyable lately.
As a self employed person, I've noticed people's manners and communication worsening. Lots of late payers and entitled, rude responses too.

Oh I had similar from Royal Mail. Paid for next day delivery to work as I knew someone would be at front desk 8am-7pm. Listed as delivered. Photo of parcel with my office building exterior in background (could be one of several businesses). No GPS location given. Reception says no sign of it anywhere, asks other receptionists in building, no sign. Next day, I told sender so they could follow up with RM. Literally as we were both looking at the teaching details online it suddenly updated saying it had been delivered (again?!) - different photo and suddenly GPS appeared. They went to the effort of lying and posting a fake photo outside my building rather than going in. We’re on the ground floor right by the entrance.

*tracking details

Oh and going into Pizza Hut and being told by the waitress that they are really busy, will be a long wait etc etc, basically everything they could to put us off coming in (they had plenty of seats, but possibly not enough staff). Companies don't even want the business it seems!

Yep 100%.

Yes yes yes. Was saying the same thing today.

Progress my arse. The world is going backwards in so many aspects.

Virgin Broadband are the worst company I’ve ever dealt with. When I left they offered exceptionally cheap deals but eventually agreed to cancel the contract and confirmed in writing.

A month later on holiday I get a string of texts saying please review your new virgin contract. I ignore assuming it’s spam and then get another saying thanks for confirming and signing up! This was with zero consent or contact with me, fuming didn’t begin to describe it and I had to waste hours of my holiday resolving it.

I think companies have cut down so much on staff that the existing staff are over stretched.
They can only do so much and often feel why bother when they look at other people not working and yet seemingly managing to survive.
I also think due to the col crisis, staff just feel demotivated. Wages in general are not keeping up with inflation.

Fewer staff, more work, people doing their best but can only do one thing at a time. Also people are absolutely the rudest and most aggressive they have ever been since COVID so it's causing more mental illness in the workplace causing fewer staff and the cycle continues. People just shout and ball over the most inconsequential things and call center staff are just supposed to take it.

School shoe fitting today I was huffed at sighed at and told I would need to pay for unsuitable shoes because that's the only ones which come in his size I declined looked on THEIR website they actually come bigger and the suitable shoes which apparently don't come in his size actually do and I could order to store to get them fitted correctly why do yourself out of a sale? They literally lost nearly £100 sale because they CBA to say pop onto our website and order some into store honestly I'm kinda done with it all

Then we went school blazer shopping and they tried putting ds into a girls blazer (it's cut differently will not fit his frame) my eyes are sore from rolling today

I'm glad i'm not the only one, getting exasperated. The university one is really grinding my gears as it was an admin error (fair enough, these things happen), which took multiple emails and then having to visit their office 3 times! Each time we're told it's been fixed (literally changing a date field) then each time we're having the same conversation over and over. Literally there again for the 4th time today, only to keep getting told, oh that's a different team....someone take some ownership!

And they don't have a direct phoneline since covid, you can only contact them via email.

Try calling HMRC….! 40 minute wait then you speak to someone who doesn’t know if you are self employed or PAYE tax payer or if you get paid monthly. Erm you’ve just gone through 5 minutes of security questions to access my account. Which clearly shows I have a job, the name of my employer and what I get paid monthly.

then they don’t know how to change your tax code and say “wait till April and the end of the tax year and you can send a claim if you’ve paid too much”. Thanks

Sky are awful - I can’t make any changes to my account because it’s in my ex’s name and they refuse to change it despite me being the contact and bill payer. I need to ask him to sort it but what if we weren’t on good terms like lots of divorced couples?

I have had such bad customer service this weekend- had a separate thread on it - so disappointing

i had terrible delivery service from amazon, eventually they refunded, but then delivered!

on a good note, my GP service were not too bad when ringing this afternoon, twice, and the music they played will waiting was vivaldi, which helped!

I'm not in the UK, but it's just the same here. I'm trying to get a response from Inland Revenue, but they are not answering calls at the moment - they haven't been answering them for ages - and they are well over the "current processing time" for what I am enquiring about. I can enquire online, and they will reply within three weeks, but the last time I did that they didn't reply at all and I had to enquire again. I used to deal with them in my first job - we just phoned the nearest office and spoke to someone.

I'm old enough to remember the days when you phoned a business, someone always answered, and the issue was resolved. Now we have all this "progress" and it's near to impossible to actually talk to a person, or not without a wait of several hours. Before anyone blames covid, it's been like this for years.

I worked in a bank when I left school in 1969. The level of customer care has deteriorated massively since then. You are treated like a nuisance now. The bank I use is an exception. My husband was on the phone to customer services today (not a bank) and they just hung up!

At least you got to speak to someone - they aren't answering calls here!!!

Although I will say that they are pro-active about tax codes, if they think you are on the wrong one they will let you know and suggest you change it.

Hard agree. With a teenager in our house, I find myself in various clothes shops which I would never usually step into.

H&M- couldn't give a shiny s*it about customers. Left security tag on clothes, insisted we queue up again to remove it. Took 15 minutes because there was 2 young girls clearly overwhelmed by the queue.
Urban Outfitters- shop was actually dirty. We were in there at about 10am- it had litter on the floor, lumps of dust everywhere, not arsed staff
River Island- so short staffed we gave up
Monsoon- shop had so must stuff rammed into it we had to walk sideways like crabs. I waited outside.
Jack Wills- please buy some damn lights that work

Teenager thinks this is usual and I am just being a Mum. I now just fuel myself with coffee and silent rage.