Phil’s Diary - [Blog @ http://www.philsdiary.net/]
Ok, got to get this out of my system.
I’m getting sick and tired of companys. Today it was the turn of Autoglass. The company that can “do our work at whatever time and whatever location is most suitable for you“. Who couldn’t fit me in until today, and then failed miserably to do it even then.
Their excuse was that the fitter had to go to hospital after his second job. I feel sorry for the poor chap, hope he’s feeling better. But why does that stop the company from fitting my piece of glass, 3 days after I asked them to. Surely they have people off ill all the time. Do they really just stall all the appointments until the fitter is well again?
So maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m just unlucky. But just to give you an idea of how unlucky, here’s a few recent events of a similar nature:
- Upgrade to ADSL. The line’s in place but no data will be exchanged as I can’t connect to the ISPs servers (ie. the equivalent of dialing in). This one’s still outstanding, and still not working.
- New Hifi for the car. Everytime I phoned no one could tell me what was happening, or when they’d get the required parts. They often promised to phone back, but never did, and every time I spoke to someone there, I got the same runaround. Current state of play is 50% there, with the second half due to be complete in just over a weeks time (nearly 4 months after the order).
- ISP Account. At my ISPs request I supplied details of my credit card, so they could upgrade their records, and use that instead of my debit card. They mangled the card details in their system and so it failed to bill me. Instead of trying to contact me they just cut my account off, again with no notice. I had to call them and query why I couldn’t contact them. I now have a new account (they couldn’t reinstate my old one).
- Pizza. The waitress managed to not put our order through, and then forgot about us. Was resolved on the spot.
- Buying my ADSL modem. I was sold second hand goods but not marked as such. I never bothered to complain.
- New credit card. Was put on hold, and then told I would get a call back as they were a little busy. They never rang back.
- Delivery company. Left the “we called and you were out” card on the pavement outside the flats, where it blew away. The letter box was working.
And we’re not talking the products themselves here. No the pizza was fine, the car stereo lovely. We’re just talking about the provision of those goods, or a service.
It does seem that if it costs more than a loaf of bread, then I’ll have some problem with getting it.
Now in fairness to the above, there are sometimes mitigating circumstances. For example with the car hifi, they had the part recalled, and weren’t given a firm replacement date. But even then it was the utterly incompetent way that they dealt with it that annoyed me. They simply couldn’t give me a straight answer (it took months to get the above reason from them).
And I’m just plain fed-up with it. It’s got to the point now where it doesn’t come as a shock when it doesn’t work out. In fact these days I’m absolutely staggered when it does work out (the last example of which was my new glasses).
So what’s the cause. Is it me just being plain unlucky? Is it because the companies pay their employees peanuts, and so they get people who just don’t care (or are plain incompetent)?
I don’t know, but every week I seem to be astounded by the sheer brilliance of a company’s ability to get it all wrong.
Ok that’s me done on that front.
Posted by Phil on September 18, 2002 06:06 PM | Categories: Thoughts