Screw Joe Bloggs

Well, that would appear to be the attitude taken by many outfits.

I am currently owed a total of around £630.

£130 of council tax, which was paid up in full before the beginning of february. I then moved out of the borough and informed the council immediately. That was 5 weeks ago, and they're telling me that there's a 7 week backlog. Given the penalties that I or anyone else would be subject to if 7 weeks behind on paying council tax to them, why shouldn't the council be subject to similar penalties for not returning my money? Furthermore, they weren't forthcoming on answering the question as to what I am supposed to use to pay the new council with if they're hanging onto my money...

The other £500 is the deposit on the flat I moved out of. The letting agents have written to me twice to remind me that they still have this money, a fact of which I am painfully aware. Unfortunately, they can't release it until I can prove that all the bills on the flat are paid (which they were in mid february), for which I need a letter to that effect from Powergen. Are powergen forthcoming with this? Are they b*ll*cks. They've been asked for it three times, and now claim that it has been sent. Second class.

Is everyone this useless?

 

yeah, wearvalley council are - when I moved out of my girlfriends I rang them twice to tell them that I've moved out, and that I need to be on the electoral role for my new address, and also for the council tax...

it took 2 phone calls for them to send out the electoral form, but my ex has still recieved a council tax bill for both of us...I'll give them a ring today...but what they normally do is just be idle all day, so they do they day to day tasks as overtime...

flamin cowboys!

 

I feel for you, Isaac, as I know how **''*** frustrating it can be when dealing with any sort of customer service department via telephone.

Having worked in a few of them myself, and having had quite a few dealings with them from the customer side, I have come to the conclusion that a company that sets up a telephone customer service department is doing so in order to provide a buffer zone for the owners/management (this will vary, obviously, depending the ownership structure), and isn't doing so in order to provide their 'customer' with 'service' at all - they are trying to minimise the number of complaints which actually cause them to incur costs.

This is done by letting the customers vent their frustrations to the poor buggers in the call centres, in the hope (and, often, reality) that they wont go the extra mile and put their complaints in writing - it's the written complaints that cause companies real headaches, as these can be sent via a recorded post of some sort and cannot be ignored, and will, ultimately, force the company to respond. When it comes to providing shareholders with information about how a company is actually doing, I think it's the written complaints that are provided to demonstrate how many there have been and, often, the number of complaint calls will go unmeasured as there is no audit trail.

I really do feel for anyone working in a call centre, working, as they often are, with a middle manager (themselves a previous phone operator whose forgotten what it's like to actually take the calls) wandering around the office carrying an invisible big stick, 'encouraging' staff to take more and more calls per hour. It's a job which HR departments recognise as having a 'burn out' time of about 9 months, this being why the staff are constantly changing, and this is another reason that it's so hard to get good service over the phone.

I can only suggest putting your complaint in writing, as you'll be amazed at the rewards that this can often bring you, and never bother getting angry with the individual that you get on the end of the phone, because more often than not they wont care about your problem (and why should they, I guess, having problems of their own which will be more important to them) and in my opinion don't really get paid enough to sit there taking the crap that people who get paid more than they do have caused.

Chris

who has just spent the best part of an hour trying to find out where the telephone engineer is who should have been here at 9am this morning

 

I've just rang them up - and they said that are aware that I've moved in and they'll send the bill out soon...but the woman said that I should keep some money back so that I can pay for my february payment...but I've paid last years bill in full....how I never shouted, I don't know...

 

I did ask the council for the address to send a formal complaint to. My formal complaint to Nildram has gone unheeded (I had a letter with a reference number confirming that they'd received it). Powergen have been extraordinarily useless at every stage throughout the time I've dealt with them... they sent me threatening letters over non-payment of electricity used before I moved into the flat, they sent me threatening letters over non-payment of a bill that was wildly wrong in its estimated meter readings and they had ignored the readings I gave them, etc. Regardless of price, I will not buy power from powergen again.

 

having done some 'work' experience at my local county councils it department it's hard to imagine how any work ever got done - ever. pissing about was the order of the day, work a distant 27th place objective, down below scratching your arse and farting.
the only thing that got done with any sort of competance was the paycheck run, you should have seen the speed that got sorted out at.
cheers


julian.

 

Has anyone noticed that if you complain to customer services of any company, you end up getting someone who argues with you, I thought the idea of these depts was to provide a solution, not argue the toss with you. The best is when they say, you have to understand this problem or that problem prevented......, thing is I don't have to understand anything, they should have contingencies in place, it's not my problem as to how their logistics wrok, I have a problem, fixing that problem is all I'm concerned with, not how or why they didn't mange that in the first place.

Sadly a fact of modern life these days.

 

It is summed up perhaps, as so many things have been, by my favourite web comic:

http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/?t=archives&date=2005-03-23

 

My mum had major problems with British gas threatening to cut us off even though she could proove she didn't owe them a penny, they ignored all letters, only the threat of legal action and complaint to the odbudman(sp) got it sorted. As usual they blamed computers.

Of course it is never their fault for not ensuring that all staff could use the computers properly in the first place. Stupid idiots.

When looking for an excuse out of a problem, blame the computers.

 

Computer says no.

 

Class - Pure class. Can't believe I missed that one