Monday 13 September 2010

It's Good To Vent: What Has Become of UK Customer Service??


I have now calmed down! 20 minutes ago I was furious. What is wrong with people who are in customer service positions nowadays? When did it become OK to NOT acknowledge a customers complaints? Why is it that a customer service rep can say 'It is not for me to suggest anything, you have to sort your own business out!'. How dare the crappy insurance guy I spoke to just dismiss everything I said and make out that we are trying to fraud his company!

Do you want to know which company I am pissed with?

Well it is esure, the insurers. We have our home insurance with them and have done for a few years now and we have made a couple of claims: root damage to drains, storm damage to roof and 1 lost diamond earring and they have always been fab. No problem at all, hence we renew with them each time.

Do you remember a few weeks back I said that some idiot has stolen my DH's bike, well we reported it to the police and reported to the insurers and they said we needed to provide the receipt. We could not find it, what a bummer! They asked for photo's of dh on the bike - err yeah right! So we sort of assumed we would not get a pay out. The claims handler said he would call back and advise what the loss adjusters said - he never did!

A couple of weeks later, I called for an update and was told I would have a call back - we never got one! That weekend there was a great deal in Halfords so dh bought himself a new bike - he needs it to get to work after all.

Then I happened to be tidying some things of mine and found the bike receipt, yay! So I called esure again to get a stroppy guy with no idea about customer service and he said we had to fax the receipt. I then called again today to explain that dh had already bought a bike and we had the new receipt etc and could they refund money instead.

I basically got told we had prejudiced the claim, it did not matter if esure never called us back, that was their prerogative (WTF!) and that if our house was ever burgled we would need to provide every receipt for every item before they would pay out. I asked what would happen if the burglar had turned the house upside down and all the receipts were ruined or such and got told it was their right to withhold the money without receipts. Anyone every heard of this before? To me this seems the world has gone crazy! Are there so many people out there now making bogus claims that those of us with good trusty claims histories and years of never claiming have to now be treated as criminals?

I will be writing to esure and making a complaint about the attitude and lack of helpfulness of the guys I encountered. There has obviously never been any training to give them decent customer service skills as neither one of them would say sorry or admit that it was not good enough that promised return calls were not made.

If esure felt they could not pay out on a bike claim as we had no receipt that is one thing and I would respect that is just the way it is but for their staff to not be able to be civil and to explain things properly is not at all acceptable.

I will be investigating other insurers and finding out if this keep every receipt thing is universal. I no longer want to be a customer of esure!

What about you? How are you finding customer service in the UK nowadays? I blogged a couple of weeks ago about how fab the service was at Chessington and recently I have had some fab service in John Lewis but then I also balance that with the promised return call that never came back to me from the local cinema and our dental surgery that now sends out reminders to some people. err how do you chose those people that are lucky enough to get a reminder??? Equality for all please.

Right rant over!

Please someone restore my faith and tell me about some great service you have recently received or rant if you like, as the title says it is good to vent and get it all out your system. Link up if you have a relevant post and want to join me on my quest for great customer service in the UK.
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