Today I tried to contact someone at British Gas, my energy billing company. I failed, utterly failed * Started live chat 48th in queue, 25 minutes later 12th in queue and logged out from website * restarted live chat 58th in queue, looked and gave up * Phoned, went through menu system and spoke to someone, after the FBI interrogation where I had given every detail I had, I mean every detail, as the last piece of information was given, line went dead. I still had not even explained what it was about. * Waited as they had asked for my phone numbers in case they would ring back to recover the line they dropped. I should have known better. * 10m later I rang again, went through the menu system only to be told it was now a 16m wait, so gave up * went through complaint procedure and web form, took 6 minutes All in all about an hour of my time, all I wanted was my 11+ year old smart meters to either be automatically read, or even replaced so that my energy monitor would work and to ask them how long this would take as I have been waiting 14 months. Complaints have a handling time of between 7 and 21 working days….so I am not holding my breath. You would think when they only have one job to do, they would excel at it…but they clearly couldn't care less about the customer.

I am sure this wasn’t the first time and won’t be the last for all of us. It’s rare you get to hear sorry after a long wait. The bigger the company, the greater the probability they will lack the basic courtesy. I won’t blame the folks on the other-side of the phone though. They are also like us. It’s the company culture and policy, tbh. 😊 Edit: They can learn a lesson or two from the likes of Amazon and Apple

> @"dfk41"#p17922 Just move supplier! Who to, who is better and I fixed my rate with them s it's £200 to move (£100 per fuel). Besides, I'd just like them to do their job properly.

@"DavecUK"#p17926 Ah, I must have missed the part where you mentioned the fix you had done! In that case, sympathies matey

Yeah any type of phone based customer service interaction is usually about as fun as plucking eyelashes. The thing that makes me go ‘grrr’ is drivers using their mobile phone. I’ll walk through town past a queue of cars at lights and at least 50% are on their phones. Mum’s in their Volvo XC90, car full of family, can’t even get off their Instagram… If I’m on the motorbike and I see it in a car next to me I’ll usually have a word. They usually put it away. Just no excuse. Zero. As a designer I’m always trying to think of a tech implementation to just stop it from happening but with navigation, passengers, the fact you might be on a train/bus etc it’s hard to lock features using the motion sensor as you need to determine who the driver is. I noticed Google are able to determine if you’re on a motorbike (presumably by lean-angles and speed in the gyroscope) so we must be close to a method. It just needs to recognise that you’re a driver and then restrict functionality to navigation and hands-free phone calls.

@"Ernie1"#p17931 Have to agree, using mobiles while driving is personally scary, not to mention 100% illegal in Qld. Very grrr. Only did it once, decades ago and the loss of vehicle control scared the chicken soup out of me. Seriously glad I'm not on a motorcycle or pushbike these days, it's an unacceptable extra risk.

@"DavecUK"#p17918 unbelievably frustrating and making a complaint within a systemically broken culture li,e that is pointless.

@"tompoland"#p17949 Lol, a bit like having to communicate by phone with a government department. Make sure your mobile battery is fully charged 😴

@"CafeNoir"#p17969 I also hate phone automated call handling that take what seems like a lifetime to navigate a massive set of menus, all with very specific seeming options. Eventually when you have disappeared down a blind alley, with no question seemingly covering your issue, it's press star and wait. Or when such a system just automatically hangs up on you!!!

Things that make me go grrr! Graffiti (and we are not talking Banksie's here). Went on a trip to brussels a few years back and virtually every building in the centre had awful graffiti including really nice old buildings but even worse…even white vans parked for any length of time had graffiti scrawled all over them. Any TV programme that spends five minutes telling you what's 'coming up' then re-capping after the break as if we only have the memories of a fish and excessive packaging just to name three.

things that make you go grrr!

giampiero

The super sale 40% discount on an object i bought the day before.

DavecUK

Doram When supermarkets rearrange the shelves to get us to discover things we don’t need. Where the f*-"+ did they hide the olives!

I remember one Christmas, the Supermarket moved the cream away from all other dairy products to the farthest corner of the very large store, normally used for dry goods. A message (not in the dairy part where it usually is) but with the unfindable cream stated that it had been moved for our convenience!

As with all moved things, it’s just designed to make you traverse more of the store and spend longer. Have you noticed certain super common common products are never listed on the hanging aisle signs and can be particularly hard to find.

Dusk

I hate the end cabinets in the chilled aisles, you walk along the entire dairy section, milk, cheese, yoghurt etc but cream is nowhere to be seen. Ahhh, its hiding around the corner. Most other ends of aisles are for special offers!

DavecUK

Dusk I hate the end cabinets in the chilled aisles, you walk along the entire dairy section, milk, cheese, yoghurt etc but cream is nowhere to be seen. Ahhh, its hiding around the corner. Most other ends of aisles are for special offers!

Also, so often the end cabinets have no relevance to what’s in the aisle, attracting you to where you think related products are, but it’s just to make you walk further.

HarveyMushman

I stopped physically doing the shop years ago and opt for online / home delivery now.

It’s actually cheaper to get it delivered for us than to drive and do it manually. Waitrose have a handy ‘don’t allow any substitutions’ button on the app and 99% of the time we get everything we ordered. Also they save all your regularly bought items as a list so the weekly shop takes about 3 minutes.

Adrianmsmith

£300 off a pair of speakers i purchased 20 days ago from a store thar has a 14 day price promise was extremely annoying. Never thought speakers would be the subject of if bank holiday deals .

🤬😭

Doram

“Unless you cancel at least 31 days before the end of your subscription term, it will renew automatically and you will be charged the renewal price in effect at the time of your renewal.”

How on earth is this legally allowed (and is such a prevailing practice)?

DavecUK

Doram “Unless you cancel at least 31 days before the end of your subscription term, it will renew automatically and you will be charged the renewal price in effect at the time of your renewal.”

How on earth is this legally allowed (and is such a prevailing practice)?

Even though you could probably legally ask for a refund and cancellation before the new term starts. However I agree, successive governments have never looked after key areas of the law as it affects the unimportant 99.9% e.g. parking on or across driveways, leylandii hedges, contract law, lemon laws…………

Cuprajake

Yeah joke isn’t it

Doram

DavecUK Even though you could probably legally ask for a refund and cancellation before the new term starts.

Yes, you can cancel, but the default is that companies are allowed to set auto renewal at a price they can (and do) hike at their will. They can then also make it difficult to opt-out of (which many do, of course). It’s the mindset and tactics of crooks and it’s perfectly legal, which is outrageous in my opinion.

DavecUK

Doram Yes, you can cancel, but the default is that companies are allowed to set auto renewal at a price they can (and do) hike at their will.

I think auto renewal should be illegal the way it’s currently done, the same for “free” trials

auto renewal should have 2 options, remind me with a renew link and, auto renew without asking. Then you can choose how it operates.
“Free” trials should by law have to send you a renew link at the end of the trial period and never just auto renew.

How hard would it be for politicians to change the law to not detriment the consumer. If they won’t do it because almost no one would choose to auto renew anything…and if businesses fight against it…that should tell us all we need to know.

Doram

DavecUK I think auto renewal should be illegal the way it’s currently done, the same for “free” trials

If anyone cared there would be many ways to improve on this. For example: not allow auto renewal as a default; not allowing no opt-out option at registration; not allowing easy (do nothing) opt-in and difficult (must call in and speak to an agent) opt-out; not allowing price hike on auto- renewed contract (e.g. by auto-cancelling auto-renewal if the company chooses to hike the price) - if there was a will there would be many easy ways to make it fairer for normal people. But if the only will is to make it as easy as possible for companies to rip off the weakest people then the reality is what we have now.

Pompeyexile

Got to admit Auto renewal is my biggest bug bare, which is why I never take up the Amazon Prime offers because I know I would chuffin forget to cancel it.

Teaboy

Pompeyexile best practice is to set for redelivery every 6 months when you order then remember to cancel before then.

SteveBRS

DavecUK

I’ve had success with some companies to contact ‘customer service ’ via their Facebook page. Good luck!

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