Subscribe to feed
Tiscali and BT fiasco
Posted by Semper on 12 September 2006
Further to my last post, it is now Tuesday and we are no further forward. Both BT and Tiscali have made calls from “customer service representatives”. Tiscali told my wife that they would be a few days solving the problem. It is as if they only started on the issue after my threat to leave. A BT rep rang to ask if I was “happy” with the way the problem had been resolved. I told him I was not happy, it was not resolved and by the way my dial-up connection which I was using was slow and erratic. After telling him this twice he then asked whether I was talking about broadband or dial-up, because broadband was not BT’s responsibility. I asked him to pay attention and he put the phone down.
This is what happens when people have work targets related to activity rather than results.
Today I rang Tiscali’s disconnection number - yes it is a national rate number! After an expensive quarter hour I got through to a rep who asked me to call back later because their computer system was “down”. I insisted he made a note of my phone number with pencil and paper and tell the management that this customer was going.
15 September 2006 at 11:30 am
Hi Semper
you have my sympathies, being without e-mail at home and having to deal with these massive call centre companies is a pain. I tend to err on the side of ‘giving the company a chance’, they may be in business etc but we are all at the mercy of electronic and electrical stuff that often misbehaves. However, tiscali, a bit like ntl seem to be getting a bad name for efficiency and customer service, which to me suggests a deeper problem within the company. As for BT we all know that they were ripping us off for years with their monopoly and only now are trying to give us any sort of value and real customer service. It seems often that it is beyond them though as the culture of ‘the customer can wait’ seems ingrained.
I’m with talktalk who have had their own fair share of flak recently, huge waiting times to join their free broadband scheme, endless waits to get to speak to someone etc, however my own experience of them has been great, helpful and prompt.
Do you think God approves of our technological world? devices to ‘improve’ our quality of life etc. It seems to me that many of these devices lead to us assuming God’s role (life and death issues etc) and that many isolate us from physical interaction towards each other and so detract from the richness of life.
16 September 2006 at 5:13 pm
Dear Incon,
You are right - “time and chance happen to all men” says the Bible.
I do feel sorry for the Indian Gentlemen with little training who go through the same questions with a slow patience, finally “escalate” the matter after determining I have not cut myself off and then receive erroneous reports back which report the problem as fixed.
I think I may feel more sorry for myself when I see my phone bill and see how much expensive phone time has been spent listening to canned jazz or to the plodding responses from the offshore call centre.