Customer Service Experiences

[shermarama]

Tonight I sat down with my esteemed housemate to transfer all the bills over into his name. How long did this take, do you think?
Thames Water
They answered the phone almost immediately, were happy with the idea that the account should transfer to a new person, spoke to braisedbywolves briefly to confirm his name and are sorting this all out. Total time: 3 minutes.

NPower
They supply both our gas and electricity.There was a minor amount of holding, and then I spoke to a cheerful if loud woman who took all the extraneous names off the bill and will put braisedbywolves's on instead, and for both bills. Total time: also about 3 minutes.

BT
They have a fiendish menu system. I negotiated it once, and they said we could do a ten day working transfer of the line. As I passed the phone over the little catch on it that hangs it up got pushed. So I navigated the menu system again, got put on hold, and then got cut off by their end. I rang then back again, navigated the menu system again (I swear it's different every time), got through to someone and explained about the ten day working transfer thing, and got told that this meant we'd have to change phone number. So because the house shouldn't have to change phone number just because I'm moving out, and the only way around this is apparently to close my account and open a new one, this meant a five minute wait while transferring to the accounts (sorry, Customer Options) department. Once on to them I explained the situation and got put on hold for another five minutes while the bloke had a chat to someone about what to do with the apparently unprecedented situation of someone moving out of a shared house. The answer is that our phone line has to be disconnected and reconnected tomorrow, and that there's no way to do this entirely by just shifting data or allocations around. At this point the phone got passed over to braisedbywolves, and there followed some more disconnections, but by this time the BT bloke had a mobile number to keep ringing back so kept doing that til he'd got through every long winded tedious part of the process. But apparently it should all work and braisedbywolves has made sure he has a reference number to call and shout at them with if the phone (and thus the broadband) isn't functional again by tomorrow evening. Total time: about 40 minutes, including three lengthy hold periods, a lot of tedious menu navigating, some hard sell about the various call package options despite the fact we made a total of £1.63 of calls last quarter, and lots of sarcasm about hold messages. But they did make the dogged effort apparently required to get through it all, so I feel I can't completely slag them off.

TV licence
I rang them up, navigated a complicated menu system of the sort that listens to what you say so you can't be sarcastic at it, and then got told that they're only open til 6.30 so they couldn't help me. Total time: 3 minutes but with no actual effect.

Orange Broadband
The companies that sell us methane, electrons and water can change the name of the person who pays for these services by changing something on a database, right there and then while we're on the phone. The company that sells us data access cannot do this. They are going to send us a piece of pulped wood fibre with some ink on it by way of the postal system, which we must then add some more ink to and return to them also by the postal system, or possibly pigeon. Total time: is going to depend on the vagaries of the Whitechapel sorting office. Pffft.

Must also finish and print out a letter to the council tax people while at work tomorrow. Fun fun fun.

Comments

[ruudboy.livejournal.com]

You might want to hold on your judgment of Thames Water and NPower. Just because they said they'd change the name...

[shermarama]

Well, Thames Water were quite effective at changing the account into my name in the first place, so I have hope for them. Oh apart from that they had me down as Mr, first off. NPower have so far generally got it right that names on the bill need to change, but they've usually got the names themselves amusingly wrong. We shall see what results we get.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

If BT fail to do anything it helps to send a letter to their address stating that if they don't reply by [date] you will assume they have received the letter and will cancel your direct debit. They don't ring you up, but they actually do it.

[shermarama]

I don't have a direct debit set up for them anyway, so there's no chance of them taking unwanted monies out of my account. The most fate-tempting thing seems to be the stopping of the phone service tomorrow. The odds on it being successfully stopped but failing to restart in good order seem horribly high.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Good luck with Orange Broadband. I'd seriously recommend cancelling the entire contract and getting in someone else.

[shermarama]

The problem with this is that there seems to be no way of doing this that doesn't involve not having internet access for about three weeks.

[spliceruk.livejournal.com]

A word of warning if BT cancel a line for any reason like a name change they will cease the broadband as well on the line automatially and many broadband providers will charge you a 40 quid disconnection fee!

[shermarama]

Oh. What? They did mention that the broadband will go off while the transfer takes place but why should the broadband company be charging me for anything related to that? It's not like I'll be breaking the contract with them or anything, just that the thing the access goes through will be temporarily unavailable, surely?

[spliceruk.livejournal.com]

Your broadband contract will state you must keep your line connected and not have it disconnected. If it is disconnected they need to ask BT to connect it again.

Now, so BT could make more money they charge the ISP money when a line with broadband they provide is disconnected this includes an name/account change!

Broadband disconnect £4.90 £5.76 Charge for ceasing/disconnecting broadband service (not for migrating away).

[spliceruk.livejournal.com]

It used to be a much higher charge maybe your ISP will absorb it

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

I do feel kind of warmish feelings towards the guy in BT because I was experiencing the very modern horror of navigating said system, getting to near the end, being disconnected, and knowing that there's no you'll be able to talk to the same lad again, so it'll all go wrong. Then he rang me on the mobile number I'd provided. Initiative, there.

Of course I then remember him trying to flog me a different call package when we just wanted to change the sodding number, and the warm feelings go away again.

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

All I can say is that you're lucky you don't have Sky!