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Thread: The sorry state of our service industry...

  1. #1
    No more Mr Nice Guy. Nick's Avatar
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    The sorry state of our service industry...

    So I've just got back from going into town for the fifth weekend running to sort out problems with various high street stores.

    First is Carphone Warehouse, who, for two months running, have failed to cancel my wife's previous contract, despite saying they would do so. So 3 think we owe them £57 for a contract my wife hasn;t even had a sim card for since the end of May.

    When she switched contracts we were told Carphone Warehouse would cancel her old one but a month later we got a bill. So we went in and told them, they took the details and said they'd deal with it... and now we have a bill for the second month AND the 'arrears' from not having paid the previous month. And this was from dealing with the branch manager!

    The next on our hit list to sort out was Dolland & Aitchinson, the opticians who so far have mis-diagnosed my wife's prescription, issued glasses with the wrong prescription even from the mis-diagnosed one, re-diagnosed her eyesight correctly and then issued the correct glasses but with flaws in the lenses!

    That lot of sorting out has taken 5 weeks from the initial sight check, so today we were in for the fifth weekend, this time to tell them we'd had enough, they'd had enough chances and we want our money back.

    We got the money back with no trouble at all but why can't this kind of routine thing just be done properly the first time?

    D+A have had £250 of ours for over a month and we've had nothing to show for... and we have to wait 10 working days for the money to be back in our account... Carphone Warehouse, whilst not costing us any money are threatening our credit score as we're now two months in arrears on a contract they should have cancelled.

    And people wonder why they get shouted at when things go wrong?

    Now I didn't do any shouting, I was nice a reasonable, polite and calm but I can see how, with apparently inept and incapable people manning most high street stores, that many people become frustrated.

    I put it purely down to the barely-above-minimum wage that most people are on... it hardly gives anyone a reason to stay and build the skills and knowledge to manage customers effectively and there's the added drawback that those who do ave the skills and knowledge will likely move on before being able to pass anything onto the new people...

    So you're business haemorrhages skilled, knowledgeable staff who go off for better pay, leaving the unskilled numpties, baffled by the systems, lacking the knowledge or experience to deal with anything more than the most mundane of requests and totally stuffed when any sort of issue raises its head.

    Gah!
    Quote Originally Posted by Dareos View Post
    "OH OOOOHH oOOHHHHHHHOOHHHHHHH FILL ME WITH YOUR.... eeww not the stuff from the lab"

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    Re: The sorry state of our service industry...

    When my xbox 360 got recycled courtesy of the UPS guy I had to make about 7 or 8 phone calls to Microsoft, each phonecall was exactly the same. When I phoned UPS they were very reluctant to give me the number for the local depot and insisted on 'getting back to you in 48hrs' (which they never did). It took a week of 'We've investigate the matter and call back in 48 hours' to get them to claim responcibility.

    After I had that I called microsoft again, gave them the support number which mustn't do very much as I had to explain everything again, twice. 48 hours later Microsoft phoned back and said they couldn't do anything at all and that was the end of the matter, even though UPS had taken the blaim, I even had a number and a name for them to phone to confirm it, which I gave to them about 5 times.

    After that I phoned UPS who said they were investigating the matter and would call back in 48 hours, that was about 2 / 3 weeks ago. About a week ago a xbox arrived on my doorstep, didn't hear a peep out of either microsoft or UPS.

    I wonder how much money and time would be saved if things were done efficiently. You'd think with all these avid capitalist businessmen/women around they'd jump at the chance to save millions in useless bureaucracy and wasted time. But they probably just want to get everything dirt cheap regardless of how inefficient it is.

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    Re: The sorry state of our service industry...

    ^Hence why Microsoft are so rich.
    Quote Originally Posted by Fortune117
    Kids are getting smarter, eventually no amount of parental controls will be able to stop them
    I guess we're expected to do quite well

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