disgruntled consumer
Jean Genius
Disgruntled consumer is getting an outing today because I've been shopping. Or rather, back on my never-ending quest for a pair of trousers that fit. This is a quest that has been in progress since about 1998 when the international conspiracy of fashion designers met in a secret bunker outside Milan and, bored with setting hemlines and choosing the new black, declared that women had changed shape. From now on, all women, whatever their size, were to be freakishly tall, have thighs no bigger in diameter than their knees, no calves to speak of, and hips and a waist that were approximately the same dimensions. I've seen people shaped that way, it's true, but they're mostly sixty-year-old men. Any designer caught creating trousers not following these guidelines was expelled from the inner circle and forced to design polyester uniforms for catering staff. Oh, and belt loops were banned. Along with pockets. Or at least that's what I think happened. The alternative is that clothes designers secretly despise us and want those of us with slim waists to hate our thighs and those with skinny thighs to be forced to wear trousers that either gaped at the back like a convention of builders or were slung so low the crotch was round their knees. I don't think I'm a particularly odd shape. I've been wearing the same size levis since I was 19 and they still seem to fit fine. But other trousers? I've had a pair of Helmut Lang cords that date from before the secret edict and they're so old they are no longer actually corduroy in places. All other pairs of trousers I own are merely allowed in the house on suffrance and the minute I find a source of non-jean trousers that don't look as though they were designed with Mr. Potato Head in mind, they're history. Tell me it's not just me... Or tell me where the secret bunker of properly fitting trousers can be found...
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Bedswapping*
This has probably been filed under the wrong category, because I'm actually not in the least disgruntled despite waiting in most of the day on and off for our comfy new spare bed to be delivered.
It all started off so well, with the firm ringing to confirm the delivery date a couple of days in advance and then ringing in the morning to give us a target arrival time - so none of your British Gas style house arrest, when the engineer promises to come 'between eight and one', leaving you stuck for the entire morning (and then arriving during the three minutes you pop out for a paper, but that's another story altogether). They duly arrived as advertised, brought down the bed and started assembling it, only to discover that they had brought the wrong bed. Profuse apologies all round, a quick call to the head office and a new bed was promised, they left the mattress and the drawers and disappeared off leaving me to arrange a new delivery time and get on with my day. Then I get another call. They have also left the wrong drawers ('They're the wrong drawers, Gromit!') so can they come and pick them up. I go back to the house, get another call - they're on their way - hang around in the garden in the sunshine - get another call - they've found the bed and are going to bring it with them. Half an hour later, bed has been delivered and assembled, cheery delivery men have apologised for the nineteenth time, correct drawers are here, wrong drawers and bed have gone, and I am waving my new best friends off as they drive into the sunset.
This episode has raised a lot of questions (like how on earth can you lose a bed?) but the main one is why I am so happy about it. Fundamentally, the company cocked up, not once but several times. But then they did a strange and unusual thing: they put it right without me having to do anything at all. And so here are Disgruntled Consumer's rules on how to stuff it up big time and still maintain a happy customer:
1. Apologise early and apologise often. I don't know why this is hard for companies to do. I suspect there's some legal principle behind it, but mostly what people want is to hear someone say sorry. A lot.
2. Ring up - that's you ring them - and sort it out as soon as possible. If you cock up again, sort that out too. Apologise a bit more. If you reach the point where the customer is apologising back at you, you have probably hit the right level of apologeticness.
3. Do what you say you're going to do and a bit more besides. Then apologise again. Then sort it out promptly. While apologising. I don't think I can overstate this apologising part too much...
4. Don't allow even your most cynical of staff to try and imply that it is somehow the customer's fault that you have cocked up. If you hear one of your staff trying to do this, cheerfully contradict them. If they are hinting that the customer might have forgotten what she ordered or might be living in an inconvenient part of London or be a little unreasonable in not wanting to take a whole week off waiting in for delivery men, overrule them (and then apologise). Offer them something they haven't even dreamt of instead, like evening delivery. I didn't even know that was legal ...
5. Have insanely cheerful (but apologetic) delivery men. Oh, and try and cock up on a gorgeous day in May when everybody is happy anyway. That helps a lot.
So there you have it. British Gas, are you listening?
* you know I only choose these titles to attract unsavoury Google hits
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Don't Mess with the TPS
I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this little encounter:
No sooner had I pressed 'submit' on my last entry than the phone rang.
Disgruntled Commuter: Hello?
Telesales person: Hello I'm Kendra from CrapSales company
DC: Sorry, this number is registered with the TPS
TP: Oh, sorry, I'll take it off the list.
DC: Thanks, bye. (puts phone down) YEESSSS!
Of course it would have been better if Kendra hadn't rung at all, but that way I would never have known how well it worked ...
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It's Like they Passed a Law
I had the day off today and decided to spend it Christmas shopping in central London - not quite as mad as it seems because, during the morning at least, there aren't too many other shoppers about on a weekday. After about an hour and a half I found I had been in and out of a dozen shops and bought precisely nothing.
The problem was that I was on the lookout for presents, whereas the shops were full of gifts. Presents are nice things that you give to people who want them. 'Gifts', on the other hand, are entirely useless things designed purely to be bought, wrapped up, exchanged for other gifts with people you don't know very well or like very much, unwrapped and then thrown away (by the ruthless) or left lying around in attics by the rest of us. I'm talking novelty salt shakers. I'm talking anything with a reindeer on it. I'm talking strange food gifts, like bottles of chilli peppers, or boxed olive oil, or anything chocolate covered that wasn't originally designed to be chocolate covered. The really organised should buy their presents in October, not because they can then spend the next two months being insufferably smug (although that would be a bonus) but because in October the shops are still reasonably full of the sort of stuff you might want to buy, instead of being full of tinsel and flashing lights and scented crap that plays tinny renditions of Jingle Bells until you want to throw it in the fire.
Anyway, after I'd fought my way through the Christmas carols and the tables piled with 'humorous' books and novelty 'reindeer poo' I found that some shops were still selling reasonable amounts of stuff, and that's when I encountered my next problem. Somebody has outlawed the selling of lambswool sweaters for women. Or so it would seem. The sweater present was the easy one, the gimme, the one I wasn't worried about. I'd just go to Marks and Sparks and buy one, no problem, right? Wrong. Where have I been? M&S has gone trendy, trendy enough that a basic sweater is no longer an option. For men, yes, men can still buy items of clothes that are not fashionable. But not women. Women must buy rayon sweaters, or cashmere sweaters because that is the law. And they must buy them in this season's colours, as that is also the law. I tried everywhere, the stodgiest shops I could think of - Austin Reed, Burberry, Scottish Woollen Mills - and not one of them dared buck the trend. Somewhere there must be a clandestine shop, approached down a back alleyway, accessible only to those in the know, where women's clothing can be purchased that does not conform in every detail to the writ laid down for this season's clothing, but I couldn't find it. In the end I was faced with a choice: 90 quid for a cashmere sweater, or a cardigan.
Next year everyone's definitely getting goats.
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God Bless the TPS
It was a call like this that made me finally crack:
Disgruntled Commuter: Hello?
Gas Company That Should Know Better: Can you hear me?*
DC: yes
GCTSKB: Is that ...er .. Deskroontled GimpEater?
DC: Sort of
GCTSKB: This is Valerie from the Gas company that should know better...
DC: I'm not interested, thank you.
GCTSKB: Why not?
DC (knowing she shouldn't get drawn into this but doing so anyway): Because I don't buy things from telephone sales calls
GCTSKB: But we're not a telephone company, Ms GimpEater
DC: I know that, but I'm not interested
GCTSKB: Not even if it saves you money?
DC: No, goodbye.
GCTSKB: But I just want you to know, we're not a telephone company we're the gas company that should know better ...
DC: Yes, thank you, I know that, goodbye.
GKTSKB: Just so you know...
DC: (after putting phone down, screaming furiously) But you already SUPPLY my frigging gas!!!
This was the third call in as many weeks from the same company. The problem is I find it very hard to be rude to anyone who works in a call centre because I'm sure it's soul destroying enough to be doing it anyway without having people screaming down the phone at them. So I end up arguing with them. What's really pathetic is how bad they are at selling things, or indeed even at making phone calls. I'm pretty sure that 'hello can you hear me?' is not part of the official telesales script, nor is arguing back, nor indeed is ringing up your existing customers and pissing them off to the point where I seriously considered changing my gas company just to get them back. Preferably when they were in the middle of cooking supper or having a bath.
But fortunately I had a much more powerful weapon to hand: the Telephone Preference Service. I've known about this for roughly a decade but it took me until yesterday to actually sign up. In 27 days I shall be free of Valerie and her useless colleagues. And it was dead easy to do. You don't even need to provide any proof that the telephone number you were signing up for was your own. It was so easy I even considered going on and signing up all of my friends as well, just as a sort of early Christmas present.
* I should point out, before anyone gets the wrong idea, that either Valerie was English or they've massively improved their sloppily enunciated Estuary English dialect classes in Bangalore.
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Mummy, what are Lettings Agents For?
I wasn't the only thing to get soaked last night. I woke at 3am this morning to find that the torrential rain had found its way through our roof and into the spare bedroom carpet. Naturally I then spent the next hour lying awake fretting about it and blogging furiously in my head ... So apologies in advance for the places where this tips over into hysteria. Trust me, it's a lot more toned down than the original post was.
The Erudite Baboon, in a recent post, was worrying that his letting agents might notice that his flatmate had changed room, name and nationality between the beginning and end of his tenancy. He should ask himself one question before worrying further: is the new flatmate in fact a dusty light fitting? If she is not, then he is safe; the letting agents will not notice. A few weeks after we moved into our new house we got the check out report and inventory for the property. Here are a few of the things that had been missed by the letting agency:
A whole extra fridge.
Three large ugly pieces of furniture.
The fact that the garden (described as 'in need of a sweep') had turned into a buddleia jungle with a rampant passion flower vine that was not only taking over the gardens of the three adjoining properties, but was over the roof and beginning to threaten the television aerial of the next door house.
The fact that the smoke alarm had been disabled.
A leak in the drain trap of the kitchen sink that had stained the cupboard underneath it (described as 'clean') with filthy washing-up water.
A hole in the roof.
Here is what they had noticed:
Dusty light fittings
Marks on the wall
The damage to the ceiling paper where the leak had obviously come through before.
A colleague at work who lets out his old flat was mortified to find that his agents had docked 40 quid off the deposit of his otherwise perfect outgoing tenant as a charge for cleaning dirty light fittings. Is this some kind of a fetish of theirs? Who could overlook a fridge and see some dust on a light bulb? Who would charge 12% or more of the rent to look after someone's property and not think to check whether the leak that had caused obvious water damage had actually been repaired? There are dozens and dozens of professional letting agents in London, yet I've never heard of a single one that wasn't completely incompetent at the most basic aspects of their job.
We do, at least, have a decent managing agent for our house who, now we've moved in, regularly performs such miracles as: answering a phone, returning an email, sending a bloke round. I'm worried that she'll turn out to be a sixth former on work experience who will soon be spirited back into school and replaced by the sort of workshy malcontent we had to deal with when we were moving in. Meanwhile, if you're a home owner thinking of letting out anything more valuable than a beachhut in Baghdad, be afraid. Be very afraid. And then get a friend to manage it for you.
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Makes a House a Home
Broadband, that is. I've been wondering why I haven't felt quite settled in the new place and I've realised part of the problem is that I can't spend the evenings curled up with a warm laptop browsing the internet. The dial up connection here is situated in the basement and anyway it just isn't the same as having hot and cold running broadband wireless in every room of the house. Our old broadband provider had proved reasonably competent up till the point we moved and we'd heard horror stories about some of the bigger names so we decided to stick with the devil we knew, cancelled our old account and ordered a new one at the new address.
Big mistake.
The first problem was the cancellation. You would think, wouldn't you that if a company specialised in providing a high-tech service like broadband that they'd keep their website up to date, particularly the part where they kept the forms you need to fill in to cancel your service and get a new one. Little things like changing the phone number so that when your other half faxes them the cancellation notice it wouldn't disappear into a black hole but would actually get dealt with so that you and your other half don't have to keep paying direct debit payments on an account they no longer can use because they no longer live in the flat. You would be wrong.
But that wasn't the only problem
While I was struggling back from work just after moving in the other half got a call from the Previously Competent Internet Provider* that went like this:
PCIP: We have a problem with your account. BT says the phone number you've given us isn't live
OH: which number?
PCIP: (reads out phone number)
OH: you mean the number you just rang to speak to me on now?
PCIP: er, yes.
The other half then rang BT who denied everything. The PCIP then said we would have broadband on the 20th. We waited. We tried again yesterday. Nothing. We rang the PCIP ('calls charged at up to 10p a minute') and were told to try again today. Today we got nothing except a stroppy letter complaining they hadn't received our direct debit mandate yet, despite us having sent it already. We rang again ('please choose from our menu of music while you wait for your call to be answered'). Ah. BT had cancelled the installation. Are we sure we hadn't accidentally cancelled the wrong account by mistake? We were quite sure. Could they activate it anyway? No, but they would look into it tomorrow, and get it sorted out. Who am I speaking to? 'Tom'
Hmmm... why do I not feel a sudden rush of confidence that they will deal with this matter with the same despatch with which they complained when our direct debit forms were a couple of days late in arriving? Answers on a postcard please. Meanwhile I've added a whole new category of disgruntlement to my blog so I can rant about these and other things at will. Enjoy.
* names disguised (for now) to spare blushes
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Copyright © Disgruntled Commuter
