Militant Consumer

So I've realised that I'm no longer the passive technophile consumer I used to be. In fact I'm not the passive consumer of anything at all anymore. Over the last few years it seems to me customer service has declined rapidly, or if not customer service, just plain service. Where when I was young I would accept this as my lot with a shrug and move on. It irritates me now. It incences me, I'm turning into a grumpy, ranty old man. Not only do I not care, I actually quite like it. Yelling at stupidity, seems to me to be almost globablly beneficial. I mean sure, the
person recieving the earful of vehment criticism isn't having a great day. But I do make the effort to point out that I'm not mad at them. Unless they're the ones being deliberately stupid obviously. Other than that - I feel better, the service "provider" (or not in some cases) gets feedback. And if I do what I consider to be a particularly spectacular smack down - I might even keep using the service/product as I consider them suitably chastised.

The point is they've made me this way. They've taught me to be the militant consumer because invariably it gets things done. When all hope is lost one last shouty nowty rant of doom has saved the day so many times that I don't even lose hope anymore. I just wait until they trip up and then start acting like a starved wolverine with chilli oil on it's privates. Why? Because it minimises MY suffering, and I've never understood people that suffer by choice.

Now, let's get some things clear. I work in IT, specifically some fairly specialist applications, and stuff goes wrong and breaks all the time. But it's software, this is the way of things. All things really. I accept and acknowledge this. What this means is when I put in complaints, they're like the support cases I open. I have done my research, identified the problem, explained the circumstances, tried to repeat the problem. Then I restate it in clear basic terms with how to replicate the issue and send it on it's way.

If a helpful reply comes back, we all get along swimmingly and another day of peace will pass in my household. I become happy with the provider and begin to form deep emotional attachments to them.

What's important here is that the reply whilst helpful, does NOT actually have to fix the problem. It merely has to read as though they at least bothered to read the email I sent them. In fact if it's a well reasoned and clear explanation of why this happened, and that there's nothing that can be done about it - then sometimes I'm even okay with that. Anything that forces me to use an online form to submit a complaint, with carefully categorised boxes had really better not come back with a copy/paste reply because that one will make me go nuclear in under a minute. Deal with me reasonably and you will have a great loyal customer who tends to leave Direct Debits running and doesn't really care. Break stuff and ignore me at your peril. You'll lose my business and I'll take as many as I can with me. It's only fair I think to make a celebration of the people that do it right as well as smack down those that get it wrong, so here you are my list of the good in the world who have done me no wrong!

Google: This was weird - I needed to sort out some stuff with Google and after my MS Passport login thing screwed up and they made the whole thing a tortuous ordeal* I was expecting similar nightmares. Instead I got a pleasant "Oh, yeah we're sorry about that, we do it to stop spam and rubbish building up. Try now it should be all fixed." And it was. I just didn't know what to do.

Photobox: I've read some people have had problems with Photobox, but I've never yet had one. Fast, polite and efficient and they seem to have actual humans do some of the QA when they're doing Canvases and things. Good Job guys!

Spreadshirt: Just brilliant. And something you'll see popping up again and again on this blog. They do a superb job every time. I had one delayed order, and they stuck an extra T in that. No fuss, no hassle.

Sky: Bit of a mixed bag here - we've only been Sky customers for a couple of years and I think we're now on the fourth Sky+ box. This would normally condemn a company to the hall of shame - except they keep speeding up my broadband connection, they've halved my phone bill, and although we're on box number four, I don't think it's actually cost us anything. And every time the engineer that came to see us was as polite as the people that took our call. B+, but seriously, save yourself pain and source your equipment from better manufacturers Sky. That is all.

The runner up award for people that tried and stumbled at the last second go to:

Force9: Awesome customer service, great ISP, then BT bought them and started pissing about with throttling. So I stopped paying the premium I was paying for quality internet, switched to Sky and saw my bandwith double for half the price (except between 4pm and 6pm where I now get about 100 times faster) . Nice one BT. Idiots. The real tragedy here is that a genuinely brilliant ISP was bought out and systematically trashed for no obvious reason. This pissed me off so much I moved phone and line rental away from BT too. Do NOT come between a geek and his internet.

The reverse runner up award for someone who I was about to go crazy at goes to:

British Gas: Who told me they'd been billing me incorrectly for two years and I'd have to pay it all again while they sorted it out (huh?). I furiously hung up and tried again with a different agent - who pleasantly sorted the whole thing out in about thirty seconds in a sing-song voice of serenity. Angel of the Call center - I thank you wherever you are!

* In the end I fixed the problem by *guessing* my password as the password reminder and reset emails were not working. And my mails were ignored. Given that my passwords usually look like this: lkj9YANS02v this is ridiculous. Fortunately I have an odd memory.

-TechTonic