You Buy? You Pay the Consequences!

After putting your children to sleep, you quickly jump in the bath, trying to get five minutes of peace. Just as you have undressed and entered into the bath to enjoy the warmth of it – the phone rings.

You find yourself rushing again as you did with your children awake, but this time your rushing because you don’t want the phone to wake the children up and you don’t want to miss the person who called, after all it could be important. Upon answering the phone you realize that it is a sales person trying to get you to buy their products.

You kindly tell them that you are not interested, but they are not finished with you. They pursue you a little further and then you get a little bit frustrated and sternly tell them that you are not interested. Once again, they pursue you until which time you realize that your bath water is getting cold and your dripping all over your carpet and when the sales people probe you further you find yourself either hanging up or being quite the angry person and telling them to leave you alone.

In the new world of e-mail and especially considering that most companies now ask for a personal e-mail address, so they can advertise their products in order to gain your interest, why are there companies still phoning people up and hassling them? Every time you fill in a form and at the bottom of the form where it says “if you would like to receive offers by phone, please tick the box” and you leave the box blank, doesn’t that mean that you are not interested in receiving any phone calls. So why are you bombarded with the phone calls when you specifically requested not to be so?

I called a company the other day, it was a 15 minute wait and then the phone line went dead. So someone must have hung up on me. You can imagine what a 0870 number would have cost me while I was in the queuing system. Yet, I can disregard this because it could be that it was accidental. I then rang again and after a further ten minute wait got through to someone. I explained my situation and then they advised that I had called the wrong department.

I was then put through to the “right department” including another six minute wait. Again, after repeating everything about my query they told me that I was to put through to another department because they didn’t deal with those queries there. So after a further four minute wait I was put through to the final department who I had to repeat everything to again and they told me that I had to put it in writing. The phone call left me totally frustrated and at the end of it all I needed to do was send a letter.

Later on I was told that they didn’t receive my letter – 32p and I had to send another one recorded delivery – £1.03 because my situation couldn’t be handled due to not giving them sufficient time to process. I explained my side and they said “you can e-mail us your query”…

WHAT!? I can e-mail!? It had cost me three phone calls with waits, two letters and a whole lot of dissatisfaction to be told that I could have sent them an e-mail in the first place. You can imagine how angry that made me.

A few days later, I received a letter from the same company saying that they are sorry to lose me as a customer and always pride themselves on customer satisfaction. Yes right, it is primarily due to their customer service, which is why I suspended my services with them. So all I can say is beware people. This is not the only company dealing with their customers like this. This same company had phoned me to offer their services. I had said no initially to the phone call but received an advertisement through the post, which I accepted. I should have stuck with the initial NO. But you learn from your mistakes, don’t you.

To the companies out there who want to sell their products: Provide excellent customer service and you will do well, with people coming back for more. And about the bombardment of telephone calls, please don’t, if we require your services, we will come to you.