Customer communications: rarely a joy
Sometimes I feel like a grumpy old man. This is mainly when I am frustrated with the poor communication and service I receive as a customer and feel the need for a good old grumble! This story is my chance to get it off my chest but it is also so farcical that it reads like a Gerard Hoffnung monologue – if you don’t know him you really must go to You Tube and listen to his tale of The Bricklayer’s Lament.
Right now I am engaged in a battle with the providers of a business credit card. The first problem was caused not by them but by Royal Mail who managed to lose the package containing all the paperwork for our annual accounts that I had I sent off to my accountants using their Signed For service (which apparently provides no guarantee, tracking or recompense). I have spent the last two months putting together replacement paperwork and I am just waiting on one last item … a single credit card statement. This is the statement that I would have been able to pull off the Internet had they sent my code through in time (the letter with my code arrived two days too late and four days after the promised arrival date).
The only way I am allowed to contact the credit card company is by phone as they don’t provide any email or physical addresses. When I phone of course I have to go through endless choices (press 1 for this, press 2 for that, etc) and security questions (they proudly tell you that if you get any of these wrong they will refuse to talk to you any further and you will have to call back – as if this was a really helpful part of their service) – you will no doubt have experienced some of this type of treatment as a customer yourself. Doing this once is a stressful chore. I have now had to do it six times because they have failed to do what they promised – and I still do not have the statement I need. Oh I should say that they did send me a statement (after the third time of asking) but it is the wrong year!
Amazingly, they do have a complete record of all my phone calls and requests for information. More amazingly, none of the people I have spoken to (a different person each time of course) seem to think it strange that my request remains unrequited and none of them seem to care that I am becoming manic in the process! However, rediscovering the Gerard Hofnung monologue has cheered me up a bit.