Customer Service

Well it has been a day of extremes today one surprisingly good the other unfortunately predictable dire. Yes for once I am going to name and shame as I am as elated as I am annoyed.

On the bad side, Sky have crossed the line once to often and come the end of the month they will find they will be losing a customer of 5 + years, not to mention an ex employee. I have had it with their non performing Internet, that for 3 years was fault less but in the last 2+ years has been nothing but ridiculous despite 20+ engineer visits, rudeness and foul language from said engineers. Lies, and sheer incompetence, with some pittance of compensation. Now they incorrectly inform us of the bill and when the bank refuses the direct debit because it is higher than that, they demand full payment with no written proof for us to have our services back, and as we argue it was their mistake and we want written confirmation they cut the Internet as we are on the phone and say the phone will go in the next day unless we pay immediately and we would then have to pay 50p per minute to pay the full amount by calling on our mobiles. What was worse was the attitude of the operative was terrible and he threatened to hang up accusing me of treating me him like an idiot when I repeated a question when he wouldn't answer a simple yes or no. Never have I been so livid in my life, Sky has this don't touch me attitude and they are just money hungry ego mad, and because of that I will not only be  changing supplier I will no longer advise people use them. If they have a problem with this I suggest some one approaches me with a hell of an apology and some serious compensation. If not, then I am with in my rights to tell people exactly what has happened to me and their customer service, or rather lack of it.

On the other side Asda today excelled, not only that they publicly apologised for the buggy breakdown on Tuesday. I wish to  compliment them on their whole attitude towards the less mobile shoppers, helpers point us in the direction of the check outs widened for buggies, there is always some one around to help reach what I need off higher shelves, and so on. However it was the kindness of one assistant that I wish to highlight. He was a young man who had the most manual of jobs basket collecting. Before I could even start the hop from buggy to return the keys of it to security he was there, ready to take them for me and plug the buggy back into the mains for me. The boy whose name I never caught was polite and patient, two qualities often neglected. He was a lovely young man and next time I will make a point of going to customer services and relaying my thanks. This was a young man who has down syndrome, but Asda still employed and he has provided in return customer services most of us dream to receive. So well done the that young man and hats off to Asda for employing someone who actually enjoys the job he does and his work reflects this.

If more people took on the later paragraphs attitude and less of the former, the world would be a far nicer place.When I was in retail the saying was good customer service would equal the customer telling 1 person bad customer service and they would tell 10. I hope to tell more people of both and let you make up your own minds. I know not all branches of a supermarket will be the same, but after all the calls to the centralised call centre of Sky I can say 90% of their staff have the attitude I suffered today. So you can do the maths on whats wrong there. Next time some one says to me "You aren't listening to me" in a tone worthy of a politician, I have my answer ready, "you aren't listening to your customers, so I will no longer be one." I have enough stress in my life to worry about about poor customer service, so I will vote with my feet, if they can't provide basic manners, I won't provide custom.