An Ombudsmen's Ombudsman please....

[ardcarp]

...we need one. I suppose this post ought to go under the 'customer service' thread really, but I just wonder if anyone, ever, anywhere, about anything has had any joy from a so-called Ombudsman?

Following extensive complaints to a mobile network, I have just received a letter from the Communications Ombudsman containing this unbelievable sentence:

We are only able to help with complaints about companies that have chosen to participate with our services. We are unable to handle complaints about Orange and EE.

Clearly we need an Ombudsman to regulate Ombudsmen, though he/she could only act, obviously, if the Ombudsmen agreed......

Incidentally Ofcom do not handle individual complaints. So multinational companies are bullet-proof and can ride rough-shod over everyone, since no-one is likely to be able to take them to court. I don't suppose naming and shaming has the slightest effect on them.

[Dave2002]

We are only able to help with complaints about companies that have chosen to participate with our services. We are unable to handle complaints about Orange and EE.

Clearly we need an Ombudsman to regulate Ombudsmen, though he/she could only act, obviously, if the Ombudsmen agreed......

Incidentally Ofcom do not handle individual complaints. So multinational companies are bullet-proof and can ride rough-shod over everyone, since no-one is likely to be able to take them to court. I don't suppose naming and shaming has the slightest effect on them.

For various reasons I have largely given up any hope of ever getting any decent service from many organisations in the UK. Dealing with organisations which refuse to acknowledge any responsibility for their own poor service just saps the will to live.

There is the National Consumer Federation - http://www.ncf.info/ and also Which http://www.which.co.uk/ which might just notice a problem, but I wouldn't hold my breath for long before getting any response.

Looking at your post the notion that any form of complaint handling organisation is unable to handle specific complaints, and that some major companies in a field are specifically excluded, seems yet another example of the madness which pervades the UK. The idea also that complaints can only be dealt with for companies which have some sort of agreement to participate also shows how toothless some of these complaints organisations are.

[Serial_Apologist]

Ever notice how gushing staff are when a new branch of this or that chain outlet opens in your district? When we had more of a "mixed economy" it used to be said that the power resided in the hands of producers, not consumers: hence the two-finger gesture to the customer in the form of, well, take your custom elsewhere if you don't like it here.

We were all promised that weaker trade unions would end "restrictive practices" and bolshy counter and complaints dealing staff. Since privatisation was supposed, by way of competitive self-interest, to "incentivise" producers to likewise their employees to treat customers as if their own continuance in the market place was in permanent jeopardy, so-called watchdogs have offered the pretense of customer protection. The truth is more like the sweet-talking salesperson with the most oleaginous smile keeping his or her short-term employment contract and selling the cheapest profitable product, probably made in some low wage 3rd world sweatshop subject to an expose every few years on Panorama or some such programme where we can all wring our hands in guilt and hopeless despair.

[Dave2002]

But where in the world are things like this any better? I used to think the USA was much better, but maybe it isn't. I don't know enough about Japan. The ideology that private companies do better - totally mad - that's why East Coast Trains has been handed over to Virgin et al. The earlier private company made a complete mess of things, and then, allegedly, East Coast was running OK and actually making a profit and returning revenue to the government. Even though I do have reservations about some problems with the former East Coast company, it seems to me that good service is possible with either private companies or publicly owned organisations, and that bad service is also possible with either. There is no direct association.

[Beef Oven!]

Short memories. Things are thousand times better these days, from a customer perspective.

[Serial_Apologist]

But where in the world are things like this any better? I used to think the USA was much better, but maybe it isn't. I don't know enough about Japan. The ideology that private companies do better - totally mad - that's why East Coast Trains has been handed over to Virgin et al. The earlier private company made a complete mess of things, and then, allegedly, East Coast was running OK and actually making a profit and returning revenue to the government. Even though I do have reservations about some problems with the former East Coast company, it seems to me that good service is possible with either private companies or publicly owned organisations, and that bad service is also possible with either. There is no direct association.

Private ownership would better protect the customer were not short-term return always the underlying incentiviser in this cut-throat world. For instance the alleged short lifespan of today's flat screen tellies is the one reason I hang onto my old model as long as possible. Each new generation of product seem to contain less sustainability, and this permits landfill dumpage on poor rightless peoples, super-profits, top salaries, and the myth of customer satisfaction to survive.

I happen to believe that the reason public ownership got such a bad name was because the model lacked industrial democracy - employees being treated in much the same top-down way they had been under private ownership rather than changing things beyond wages and conditions, the default positions of capital vs. labour relations. While places exist which are still propitious to exploitation the employer class will do everything in its power to prevent the globalisation of worker rights.

Look after your library of books in the... meantime.

[Dave2002]

Short memories. Things are thousand times better these days, from a customer perspective.

A thousand times? No!

Mostly they are better - when things go well, but they can still be very poor when things aren't working. I still don't think that service levels are as good as they were in California in the 1990s. Legally customers have more rights in the UK/Europe, but in practice we found that service in the USA was very much better than anything we've ever experienced in the UK. Rights without action are a complete waste of space.

Re railways, Swedish railways did from time to time shine. They weren't perfect, but a couple of examples:

1. A train travelling towards the airport at Arlanda was late. A railway representative went down the train, checking all passengers with flights, and phoning the airline to make arrangements so that they could, if possible catch their flight.

2. In a fairly quiet part of Sweden there was a conference. One afternoon hundreds of people, mostly from the conference, descended on the station for a train. Within a very short while SJ (the railway company) had noticed this, and very spontaneously arranged for an extra train to be put on a few minutes later. OK - their railway system is not overloaded, but this is a level of service which I don't think would be even thought of in the UK, even it would be logistically feasible.

However, construction and maintenance companies in Sweden could be absolutely dreadful. They seemed to have a policy of complete deafness and indifference to any complaints or requests for any "pulling out of fingers" to get jobs done. The workers would arrive on the dot at 8am, and be tidying up their tools "on the dot" again at 3.50pm ready to leave at 4pm. No explanation or interface to the "customers" - and probably no compensation either - nada, zilch! Truly awful.

[Dave2002]

Short memories. Things are thousand times better these days, from a customer perspective.

Just had a truly appalling stonewalling from BT. We had faults on our line in February, which I reported, with very few calls being made satisfactorily.
This was acknowledged as being due to faults in the network. We also have another telephone line, with another provider, which was also affected though to a lesser extent. BT claim the fault was corrected on 6th February though on that day we had a moderate number of incoming calls which were wrong numbers. When I asked some of the people which number they were dialling, the numbers bore no resemblance to ours. One woman dialled three times, so there were clearly dialling and routing issues within the network and the local exchange.

After a day or two these problems diminished.

I happened to check my bill a few days later. It was considerably more than normal, as we deliberately make hardly any calls via the BT lilne because we think their charges are too high. There was one item, apparently to a 118118 number, for which we were charged £19.87p. That call was allegedly for 6 minutes 57 seconds.

I queried this by online chat the following day, and was told to wait until the full bill was completed.

I waited, and the charge was still there on the bill completion date. I queried again by online chat, and was told it was being dealt with.

Yesterday I phoned, and talked to "someone in India" who explained that "you made that call ..." It was to an external provider.
I tried to explain that we did not, and that there was an error in the system, but was assured that there was no error! "Perhaps someone else in your family made that call". I very much doubted that, as Mrs D. would not have done that either, and was the only other person here.

I then received an email from BT about the outage which we had experienced, for which BT had offered a miserable £4.40. I had actually told the person in India not to process that, while all this mess was sorted out, but in the email it said:

Thanks again for choosing BT

Libby Barr
Managing Director, Sales and Service

I then looked up Libby Barr, and tried to phone her at the BT headquarters in London. "You can't speak to her." I asked why not - inevitably "She's busy." Eventually I was connected to a lady who went through the whole thing again, but still "You made the call." I queried how it could be that they could be so sure that the call logging and billing system would be working, when they admit that their network can have faults. Trying to explain things logically to these people seems impossible. This is really appalling.

When I mentioned this to a friend last night, his first comment was more to the effect of "Why was the call so expensive anyway? Surely it should only have been a few pounds at most." If that had been the case, I would probably give up, as not worth pursuing.

Now BT are saying that they can't deal with it. We have to chase up the 118118 operator for further information. We have so far done that, and now they have admitted that they no longer have any voice recording which could possibly show whether anyone from this house did make the call. However, now we have to send them the copy of BT's bill, plus other copies of utility bills etc., simply for them to release details of the call - so that we can "prove" that we didn't ever do that.

I also checked that BT have taken the full amount of their bill from my bank account, even though they should have a record that the item was in dispute. The full amount has been taken.

This is just disgusting. You call that service.

I am inclined to cancel my BT subscription immediately, cancel my direct debit, and ask BT to remove their YouView box within 48 hours. I shall charge them £50 a day for storage for each day that it remains on our premises.

Of course I don't really want to do this, but this level of customer service is just outrageous.

No doubt there is an Ombudsman, or complaints procedure, but for heavens sake, is there no sanity in all this. I don't trust any of these other organisations any more than the original company we are dealing with.

Several people have suggested that Twitter gets results, but I don't really know how to do that. I do know Twitter, but how to make it work for this kind of situation is outside my experience.

Does anyone have any good suggestions for a good broadband and telephone supplier?

[Beef Oven!]

BT have never managed to shed their nationalised public-sector culture, IMV.

I switched to one of the private sector commercial providers yonks ago and I've had nothing but excellent service, all round.

I don't know why people stick with BT. It's a free country, I suppose.

[Dave2002]

BT have never managed to shed their nationalised public-sector culture, IMV.

I switched to one of the private sector commercial providers yonks ago and I've had nothing but excellent service, all round.

I don't know why people stick with BT. It's a free country, I suppose.

We went back to BT after having poor service from TalkTalk, and there was a good deal when we took out our contract. I do have to mention, though that some of the poor service we had from TalkTalk was due to failures in the BT infrastructure. Which provider have you been using?

Have you seen the front of Private Eye recently?

[Flosshilde]

BT have never managed to shed their nationalised public-sector culture, IMV.

Well of course you would say that. It's more likely that they have seized on modern corporate culture gleefully, realizing that they can do what they like & get away with it.

[Dave2002]

Well of course you would say that. It's more likely that they have seized on modern corporate culture gleefully, realizing that they can do what they like & get away with it.

[rauschwerk]

BT have never managed to shed their nationalised public-sector culture, IMV.

Someone I know well who works for BT would certainly agree. But in addition there is an obsession with cost cutting, the share price and the next quarter's results. I don't know how anyone can stand working for BT, quite frankly, but I suppose many other plc's are the same now.

[Beef Oven!]

We went back to BT after having poor service from TalkTalk, and there was a good deal when we took out our contract. I do have to mention, though that some of the poor service we had from TalkTalk was due to failures in the BT infrastructure. Which provider have you been using?

Have you seen the front of Private Eye recently?

I have been using TalkTalk. Excellent service and best prices too. I'd recommend them (and do) to anyone.
And if some of the problems you had with TalkTalk were due to BT, why on Earth did you go back to BT?

[Beef Oven!]

Someone I know well who works for BT would certainly agree. But in addition there is an obsession with cost cutting, the share price and the next quarter's results. I don't know how anyone can stand working for BT, quite frankly, but I suppose many other plc's are the same now.

I know a few people at BT too and they say the same thing.

The focus on cost cutting, share price and the next quarter's results is not the best way to deliver a quality service. Sounds very bureaucratic. Public sector ethos not matching up with commercial realities.