cheers
pp

interestingly have just had another experience. around 4-5 years ago i was bought a top of the range sony camera which cost nearly £500. you’d expect it to last right? but recently (and of course we’re way outside the standard warranty period) the telescopic lens mechanism has started playing up, taking several goes before it disappears back into the body of the camera when shutting down. then last week it refused to move altogether.

so today i took it back to a sony shop and showed it to the sneering young sales assistant who took one look at it and said he could send it back for checking but that it would cost a minimum charge of £189 and no guarantee that the problem could be solved or warrantied afterwards. he casually added that he’d much rather sell me a new camera for £50 less. yes i’m sure you would mate because then you’d earn a commission instead of trying to help a loyal customer who’s been buying sony products for many years.

i asked him if that’s the best he could offer – i simply junk my existing camera and buy a new one. it reminded of the the sony tv we bought for the staggering sum of £2000 about 6 years ago whose screen became smoke burned after a couple of years. we’d taken out an extended warranty fortunately (ha!) which allowed us a replacement which by that stage was costing around £700. however we were still liable to pay the outstanding balance on the £2000 despite everyone agreeing that the original tv set was a pile of crap. i swore never to take out extended warranties after that.

so when the assistant in the shop told me the camera was really old-fashioned now (oh the embarrassment of a 4 year old piece of technology) and that we’d be better getting something slimmer and neater than faffing around trying to fix the old camera, i told him (in front of a crowd of customers) that i thought sony’s after sales care was lamentable and that i’d just decided that i’d never buy a piece of sony equipment again. a couple of folks shouted ‘well said’ as the young, indifferent sales guy just shrugged. so i left.

it must be me i think….
pp

Latest update.

I sent a mail to the new MD at Virgin Broadband, Jon James as follows;

“Good Morning Jon

Apologies for contacting you directly, but I really could do with some help which will preserve what little sanity life has left me.

You see, the problem is my father-in-law; or more specifically his new Virgin Broadband service.

He signed up over the phone for the service a few weeks ago, and I went to commission his connection last week.

As his PC was previously owned by Noah, I took him gently by the wallet to Staples and we purchased a new glossy Compaq Desktop – his new pride and joy.

I plugged his Thompson (supplied by Virgin Braodband in its impressive pack) router together with power, DSL cable via the cable dongle from his phone socket, and ethernet cable to the PC – simples!

The power light sparked up, the ethernet glowed into a reassuring green, then the wireless light came on and we waited for broadband, then internet then surfing the BBC gardening website if full glorious colour.

Unfortunately, our experience got only as far as the flashing of the broadband light (at a rate of 2Hz the helpful troubleshooter page told us, which is nice). The internet light stayed stubbornly off.

I read again his letter which said he now had a service, and confirming his payments, then back at the steady blink of the broadband light – and do you know what? Right I’m thinking that this isn’t the experience you would hope for in the case of a new customer, fresh from 50 years of loyal service to BT.

So, we called the helpline…… after 45 miniutes of hold music of our choice (now there’s one which I can’t figure, are you seriously saying that you expect customers to hold as part of your process and therefore have invested money in a bespoke music on hold service. Now colour me pink and call me Nancy, but isn’t this a bit of lop sided business thinking? I would have thought that you would have benefited from investing in ways to reduce the number of folk who call you, and deal speedily and efficiently with those who do, so that they remain loyal and have fab and groovy thoughts about the Virgin brand rather than a gnawing desire to have a proctologist retrieve your products from within you!)

We have kept calling the help line, at all hours of the day and night, often trying to surprise them, you know when they least expect it. But after 5 days of this it became clear that despite getting pop when I clearly asked for rock on my customer interface customiser, we weren’t going to get to speak to anyone.

So, bless him, my father-in-law has written to you, in the false but endearing hope that an angry letter to the MD will get him a response. Well he does read the Daily Telegraph.

I therefore throw myself upon your mercies, and ask you to nudge a coherent member of your customer services team to call this poor chap and help him;

a) Get his service on line and working
b) Manage his expectations of the service
c) Place a reality check on his view of the modern world of faceless corporations

It really would mean so much for the ongoing mental status of him, his long suffering wife, his three kids, his three grandchildren and the locals within the Three Tuns pub who have tried to talk him back in off of the window ledge over the weekend.

Make it happen Jon, please, for the love of a good man and his family – you know you have the power.”

AND I got a reply, promising action from a named contact – even included a mobile number. My faith is restored.

Just hope the bloody thing works now!

CC

there you go; it isn’t just me then. they really are a pile of crap and it’s hugely disappointing because you and i both know the guys who set up the virgin mobile thing, which became virgin media when they fused with our old friends at telewest. where have all the people gone who cared about this sort of thing?

it is sad that we can’t seem to get any of this right these days. i absolutely hate having to chase people to get them to make something work as it was described on the tin when we bought it. and then they try and fob you off and a simple phone call turns into a ranting session. i always have an argument now. it’s so unnecessary. anyway hope all’s well cc.
pp

Like you (and indeed in common with E) I rocked up to my father-in-laws at the weekend to set up his newly purchased PC onto his newly commissioned broadband service – emboldened as I was with my recent experience of setting up my new BT wireless modem and router (I had actually managed to configure a laptop, two desktops and an X-Box 360 all within the space of an hour and a half).

Phrases such as “piece of pi$$”, and “we’ll be down the pub celebrating within 30 minutes” rolled easily off of my tongue as I stepped through the door. The wording on the VM leaflet should have warned me that I was in for the long haul. “We welcome you to our braodband service and can assure you that the router is already pre configured for you, so that simply you plug it into the phone line and your PC to be instantly connected to the internet”.

Look I know now that I should have been more wary, but it’s easy to be wise after the event. All I thought about was how many beers my invoice would be, and the the pub had a new guest beer on, Spitfire from Shepherd Neame (lovely!).

Having simply follwed the instructions in the glossy VM pamphlet, the broadband light failed to stay alight and merely blinked on and off, whilst any attempt to connect to the internet came up with a panel saying that no DSL line activity was evident. Oh f@*k!

“Let’s call the installation’Priority’ helpdesk” I said “VM is such a people friendly company that they’ll surely know what is happening”.

So I called, went through the “press 1 for complaints, press 2 for sales, press 3 for tracking progress on orders, press 4 for help on splitting the atom…… press 143 for help installing new equipment” hurrah.

The, just to show how carring VM are I get a message that there is a long queue at the present time in excess of 15 minutes, so I might like to e-mail them (how the f@8k is anyone experiencing difficulties in getting connected going to e-mail them? Then……..then the bit I find hardest to deal with, I get the option of what kind of hold music I want “press 1 for classical, press 2 for inie/rock, press 3 for pop…… ” surely this is madness, they have invested money in managing their customers experience of queuing as a business process. This means they always have queuing other wise why bother.

I waited listening to pop (even though I clearly said I wanted rock) for 45 minutes, and didn’t get a chance to talk to any one. So, we went to the pub, and I had to buy my own beer. Branson you ba$tard I thought.

Next day, a Sunday, I called at 7:30 in the morning….. repeat of Saturday experience, another 45 minutes but had to wait until pub opened to get calm.

This continued all last week, with both me and my father-in-law trying to surprise the helpdesk at all hours of day and night – but no luck. he finally cracked on Thursday and wrote a strongly worded letter to the MD and expects a call back. That’s the problem with having lived in an age when customer service actually meant something, I know his letter will end up in a bin.

VM are sh1t. There is no other comment worth making. He has cancelled his subscription as his only recourse to getting soemone to speak to him.

How difficult is this? Creat a product with appeal (well done Virgin for that one), make sure it works, has some reilience and clear ways to help your self through any minor irritations (Oh dear Virgin not so good there) and make sure that if anyone has to contact you that you answer them 9 times out of ten (Virgin you are complete cows ar$es).

Having a problem isn’t the end of the world, however, not being able to pasify an upset subscriber who wants nothing more than what they have paid for is the death knell for any company.

I hyave friends who work for Virgin, and called them to try to get some help, and even they said, “you’ll be lucky”, so even their own staff don’t have any faith. And these were ex-Telewest employees, you know the ones whose customer service was akin to the public face of Attilla the Hun.

Sorry, to bang on PP, but your tale of woe touched a nerve. Now where’s Bransons house in Kidlington…… I think he may need a good proctologist to get his router back from where I’m going to shove it.

Toodle pip

CC

Wouldn’t miss my sister’s graduation would I? Think all should be well for the 11th Hel if you could spring me a ticket. ciao
p

Not really. I’m always happy to re-read what i’ve done and whilst always ready to tweak what i’ve written, i’m usually comfortable with it. only occasionally do i regret writing certain things and then i usually try and correct myself or apologise asap afterwards.

you’re welcome anytime

pp