Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Tearing It All Apart

What would you do if you wanted a new telephone system in your home or office? Would it be reasonable to assume that one of the best known telecommunications companies would be able to service your needs? One would think so. Feeling confident in this course of action I called out such a company (lets call them UKTEL) asking them to visit and give us a quote. Imagine our surprise when we were told that someone was in the area and would be with us within half an hour. Our faith in the multinational corporations was some way to becoming restored. Come the hour, come the telephone engineer and at the appointed time he duly arrived and proceeded to take detailed notes and measurements, leaving us with the assurance of a swiftly delivered, reasonably priced quotation. And there it should have ended. However we were of course naive in our optimistic assumptions.

A couple of days later we received a phone call from UKTEL wondering if we would like a quote for a new telephone system. An uneasy feeling of Deja Vu swept over me.

“No, that was last week’s conversation and you’ve been and gone.”

“No, no one has been out to see you.” the UKTEL rep assured me.

Now either I had slipped into some parallel universe or an international terrorist had infiltrated our company under the guise of a telephone engineer. I didn’t much like either explanation but was truly flummoxed so the UKTEL Rep said that he would endeavour to investigate. A couple of days later he called back.

“The wrong company came out” he informed us.

“So it wasn’t someone from UKTEL who came out.”

“Yes it was someone from UKTEL.”

“So you’re not from UKTEL?”

“No we are from UKTEL.”

Are you confused? By this stage I certainly was. He then gave me a detailed explanation of the internal machinations of UKTEL involving franchises, umbrellas, mergers, devolvement, involvement and unilateral nuclear disarmament (probably) by the end of which I had lost the will to live.

Essentially someone from the wrong franchise had come out and now this would have to be rectified by someone coming out from the right franchise to get identical information from us.

“Would it not be easier” I suggested “just to get the information you need from Franchise 1 and then you can send us the quote?”

The UKTEL rep probably then shifted awkwardly in his seat and said “Well you see they won’t give us the information”.

It turns out that for a major telecommunications company, they don’t seem very willing to communicate with each other. You see Franchise 1 was annoyed because they had lost the job to Franchise 2 so won’t give them our details. Franchise 2 are no doubt too scared of the big bullies at Franchise 1 to ask a second time if they can have their ball back. At this point I felt compelled to ask him which nursery school he was phoning from, what with the company throwing its toys out the pram with such velocity. With the prospect of yet another UKTEL Engineer/international terrorist coming to visit us to get exactly the same information which we had previously given to the first UKTEL Engineer/international terrorist we politely informed them that we would not be using UKTEL for our telecommunications needs.

As a little postscript to this, shortly afterwards, another employee from UKTEL contacted us to find out the phone number of the UKTEL rep that I had spoken to. A telecommunications company with no internal communications, and to prove it, not even an internal telephone directory. Just what sort of set up are we dealing with here? I don’t think that Sir Alan Sugar would be too impressed.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've given up on telecommunications. I think we should just go back to pigeon carriers.

Gwen said...

What an excellent idea Crystal. Life would be so much simpler.

Omega Mum said...

It's a metaphor for life. Definitely. How's the weather, incidentally?

Gwen said...

Very good point Omega Mum. As for the weather. It's pretty cool and quite overcast. There was a heavy shower last night and we are "promised" more of those over the rest of the week.:-(

How is it with you?

Mo said...

Now I wonder which company that could have been :-) A certain cable company which recently amalgamated/took over several other companies (get my drift?!) isn't any better. I phoned last night to tell them I couldn't reinstall my broadband software - it was glitching. "If you go on line you can install it direct" "But I can't go online, that why I'm reinstalling." "You can download all you need online" "Yes, but I can't go online" and so the conversation went until after I'd told them this 5 times, gave in and hung up!!

Valentine Suicide said...

Alright Gwen,

This company didn't use phrases like 'Openreach' and 'Wholesale' and 'Global Services' did it?

Squirmy Popple said...

So much for customer service, eh?

Gwen said...

Thanks for your visit Mo. Sadly your experience is all too common. These people do not seem to have any common sense whatsoever. Either they are stupid or they think that we are stupid. I really don't know which is worse.

Hi Valentine. I think they may well have done, but I had probably given up by then. But yes it is that very company.

Katie I don't think customer service really exists these days.

debio said...

I bet their customer service dept is based in Mumbai - it always seems easier to make international calls than anything local...things are just becoming more and more complicated. I recall my grandmother's phone number was just three digits and she seemed to spend her time talking to the operator who responded in 'BBC' English. Good God, how old am I?

Gwen said...

Sadly many customer service departments these days seem to be based in Mumbai. With the best will in the world, there just isn't the personal touch if your customer service rep is a few thousand miles away and I have quite often been given wrong information by these departments. To come back to what I said on your blog - progress quite often actually slows things down.

Anonymous said...

Did you disenfranchise him? I would have done. I once rang Customer Services of a well known mobile phone company (shall we say M1?) and I had to give them the phone number for their own sales department. Useful.

Perhaps some charges could be levied as we seem to be doing their job for them.

Gwen said...

Ooh I do like the idea of disenfranchising him. That would have been fun and he would have deserved it. Of that there is no doubt. Perhaps I should now send them a bill. How about an "administration fee" of lets say £300.00. I wonder how they would take to that.