{"id":7297,"date":"2011-03-16T13:35:46","date_gmt":"2011-03-16T13:35:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alananna.co.uk\/blog\/?p=7297"},"modified":"2011-03-16T13:35:46","modified_gmt":"2011-03-16T13:35:46","slug":"the-highs-and-lows-of-customer-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alananna.co.uk\/blog\/2011\/03\/the-highs-and-lows-of-customer-service\/","title":{"rendered":"The Highs and Lows of Customer Service"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been a frustrating week here in our Simple Life of Luxury. Trying to get through to customer service representatives can be a nightmare. As I mentioned in a previous post, our phone line went down<\/a> again in exactly the same way that it did at Christmas<\/a>. We could see the wires hanging off the telegraph pole and needed an engineer to pop up there and reattach them. We made countless phone calls to our phone provider Primustel and each time they promised to ring us back (usually within 24 hours). We allowed them 24 hours each time but not once did they ever attempt to get back in touch with us.<\/p>\n

It’s just so frustrating because no matter how much you tell them that you need an engineer to come out there’s nothing you can actually do to get them to send one out.<\/p>\n

In the end it is of course a BT engineer that comes out, but we have to go through Primustel to get one, if Primustel say they’ll arrange for one within 24 hours you have to believe them but in fact they do nothing and you have to keep phoning and asking for an engineer. You then have to wait, they do nothing so you start all over again. Arrrrggghhh!<\/p>\n

In the end I posted a message on Twitter and was soon contacted by a customer service rep at BT – I explained the situation and that I realised it wasn’t their fault but asked if there was anything they could do. Now, I never thought I’d say this, but just the fact that BT have people monitoring Twitter is a good thing. The may not be the most loved company out there but having customer service reps on Twitter at least shows that they are making an effort. They couldn’t actually do anything about it though.<\/p>\n

We did finally get an engineer out this morning, a week after reporting the fault. He fixed the line but it didn’t help with the internet connection so I had to phone our ISP to see what they could do. They said that because the internet had been disconnecting so much whilst the line was damaged that the line would have been registered as faulty at the exchange so the speed would have been reduced on it. Apparently after 72 hours of continuous connection the speed should increase again. It looks as though I’m going to have to wait another 3 days before I can do any work, assuming of course that it does indeed fix itself after 72 hours.<\/p>\n

On another note, my new bike has arrived and I did at least have good customer service from BikeTreks<\/a> where I bought it. They kept me informed of the order progress throughout, telling me where the bike was coming from and where it was in the process. They e-mailed me when they had it and when they shipped it to me and then gave me a phone call yesterday once it had been delivered to make sure that it arrived OK. I guess that while my internet connection is still slow I may as well get out and ride it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been a frustrating week here in our Simple Life of Luxury. Trying to get through to customer service representatives can be a nightmare. As I mentioned in a previous post, our phone line went down again in exactly the same way that it did at Christmas. 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