Pardon my rant

Lightmancer

Legend
Location
Sunny Frimley
Name
Bill Palmer
[breathing heavily]
Please indulge me whilst I rant.

Bought a BT home cam before I went on hols. It's a webcam, that has a motion sensor.

I got around to fitting it up yesterday, focussed on my courtyard/front door. It is set to switch on, and record motion.

In spite of being set to a sensitivity of "lorry", it falses on average every 30 seconds, filling up cloud storage with 15 seconds of nothing, each time.

1. Try BT Online chat. Get through twice. Each time chap (same name) introduces himself after 30 seconds, then I am "requeued" for a 30 minute wait. Give up.

2. Call number on box. Get through to tech support.
"Have you adjusted the sensitivity?"
"many times"
"have you turned it off and on?"
"many times"
"have you reinstalled it?"
"three times"
"then that's all we can advise. I'll put you through to the BT shop for a replacement."
"I don't want a replacement, I..."
(snick)
[long wait on hold]
"I wish to return a faulty webcam"
"certainly, have you tried tech support?"
"Yes"
"we need a fault code from them - do you have one?
"nooo...."
"I'll transfer you back"
"NO! just a minute! I have taken 15 minutes to get this far! I..."
(snick)
[hold music... "you are held in a queue..." "your call is important to us..."
"Tech support, how can I help?"
"I'll keep this brief..."
[explains, gets fault number]
[transferred back to BT Shop]
"I wish to return a faulty item"
"certainly Sir..."
[provide account identification information]
That's fine Sir, your return code is [xxxnnnnnnnn] and the address is..."
"don't you want a fault code...?"
"oh no we don't need that..."
AAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH...

That's 25 minutes of my life I won't get back... :dash2:
 
I am sorry to hear that. I sympathize as I've been in a few call center discussions. I'm sure they said that they understood your frustration (which makes you as a customer even more frustrated).
 
[breathing heavily]
Please indulge me whilst I rant.

Bought a BT home cam before I went on hols. It's a webcam, that has a motion sensor.

I got around to fitting it up yesterday, focussed on my courtyard/front door. It is set to switch on, and record motion.

In spite of being set to a sensitivity of "lorry", it falses on average every 30 seconds, filling up cloud storage with 15 seconds of nothing, each time.

1. Try BT Online chat. Get through twice. Each time chap (same name) introduces himself after 30 seconds, then I am "requeued" for a 30 minute wait. Give up.

2. Call number on box. Get through to tech support.
"Have you adjusted the sensitivity?"
"many times"
"have you turned it off and on?"
"many times"
"have you reinstalled it?"
"three times"
"then that's all we can advise. I'll put you through to the BT shop for a replacement."
"I don't want a replacement, I..."
(snick)
[long wait on hold]
"I wish to return a faulty webcam"
"certainly, have you tried tech support?"
"Yes"
"we need a fault code from them - do you have one?
"nooo...."
"I'll transfer you back"
"NO! just a minute! I have taken 15 minutes to get this far! I..."
(snick)
[hold music... "you are held in a queue..." "your call is important to us..."
"Tech support, how can I help?"
"I'll keep this brief..."
[explains, gets fault number]
[transferred back to BT Shop]
"I wish to return a faulty item"
"certainly Sir..."
[provide account identification information]
That's fine Sir, your return code is [xxxnnnnnnnn] and the address is..."
"don't you want a fault code...?"
"oh no we don't need that..."
AAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH...

That's 25 minutes of my life I won't get back... :dash2:

Bill,

Somehow this reminds me of the shower scene from a really bad prison movie. A condolences card is on the way . . .

To err is human; to really screw things up you need a wicked fast processor . . .

Cheers, Jock
 
The sort of thing that drives me to distraction. My last experience was with a pharmacy and insurance company, where an "urgent" request for them to correct their mistake took 10 days. Fortunately, not having the med in the meantime was merely extremely uncomfortable, not life threatening. Grrrrrrr.
 
First off, I have no official connection to B&H Photo. That said, the phone system at B&H was relatively people friendly, and the people I eventually spoke to were very competent. In most phone systems, the person you talk to just wants to shuffle you off to the next person who doesn't know what they are doing , and you end up endlessly getting processed through. I'm constantly saying, "why the f--- doesn't anything work???!" But B&H works with refreshing dependability.

I admit that this may be the lament of an old man stuck in a much more crowded world than the one he grew up in, but I miss the days when you got a person on the other end of a phone call and when a doctor called the pharmacy and they jumped to get the medication ready. When medical decisions were not being made by actuaries but by medical staff.
 
It's worse than that. I know full well why I got bounced on the online chat - it's because they are monitoring "time to first response" stats because they can show them to the regulator and pretend they are being effective.

I also know - for a fact - that BT have levels of call-centres. The top level is "The Chairman's Office" - a call centre of about 40 seats. I dealt with them once, when they decided, in their infinite wisdom, to change my home telephone number without notifying me or asking permission. I got the regulator involved in that one, and free line rental for a year. The lowest level, in true Dantesque fashion, can do nothing but frustrate - all they can do - let me repeat this - ALL they can do - is apologise for the outage/problem/inconvenience. Once you realise this, they are easy to get past. Simply say "I will tell you my problem. Do not apologise. If you apologise I will ask immediately to be transferred to your supervisor". Trust me, it works.

1. Always get a name/reference at the start of a call
2. Always make a note of the time
3. Always ask for a supervisor if you are getting nowhere
4. Keep doing 3 until you get to speak to someone who can sort the problem. No is not an answer.
5. Always keep the ball in their court - you are the customer; don't let them pass the problem back to you in any way
6. Above all, always keep your cool - never, ever swear or lose it
 
My solution is not ideal, but it works.

Assume EVERYONE is an absolute imbecile and expect that EVERYTHING will be a complete hassle (and/or totally messed up) and lower your expectations as far as you think you can.

Then lower them again.

Then, and only then, can you even hope to be satisfied.
 
We just finished (well, 99% finished anyway) a massive renovation / remodel of the first floor of our condo and our two upstairs bathrooms. All told, it went far FAR more smoothly than I ever really could have hoped. They told us it would be finished by last Friday and it took Patton's Army here on Friday to make it happen (none of my neighbors could get in or out of their garages - really nice situation) but damned if they didn't get it done and did an absolutely GREAT job too.

The ONLY thing that really went badly during this process was ordering and receiving three new toilets from the Home Depot prior to the start of construction. I ordered a slew of stuff from them and everything was easy except the toilets. The people I actually dealt with on the MANY phone calls I made were unfailingly polite and helpful and really attentive - I've got nothing but praise for them. BUT getting to them was something else altogether. And the frequency with which I needed to get to them was astounding. All told, I had to order three different sets of toilets before I found some they could actually get on a truck for delivery. Discovering that each successive order wasn't going to be able to be filled was a hell of a process that took many many calls, with hold times ranging from about 15 minutes to a long of an hour and a half. And once I finally managed to find some toilets that we wanted (the default toilet these days is about 2 inches higher than they used to be and we really wanted a height like the ones we were replacing) and they could actually SHIP, they had to ship us five bowls before we got three that weren't broken. And each time a broken one arrived, there was another series of phone calls and waaaaaay too much time spent on hold, followed by unfailingly helpful people once I got through. And the nearly classic O'Henry ending was that when the very last one was delivered two days before we were set to leave for the five weeks of construction, I didn't KNOW it had been delivered, had just spent the morning on the phone trying to track it down, and then backed straight into the carton it was in with my car when I went to look for another toilet locally! It was the final piece to the puzzle and thank the deity of your choice I didn't break it, but it would have made an even better story if I had.

The people I dealt with at Home Depot on the phone were flat out wonderful. But they've got some serious internal communication problems with their computers and between their corprate folks and their many warehouses and it was a screwed up mess to deal with. I'd have been thrilled to have given only a half hour of my life to this - it was probably closer to a full day spread over a few weeks.

But, hey, all's well that end's well. And this renovation ended REALLY well. We're extremely happy with it and, on balance, it was an incredibly smooth and easy process. Just a boatload of money. It just ocurred to me within the past couple of days that this renovation cost us about 75% of what we paid for our first home about 30 years ago! Then again I own three cameras right now and the least expensive of them (by FAR) cost me about twice what I spent on my first car back in 1977, so I try not to think about stuff like that...

-Ray
 
Back
Top