Andrew Speakman

Yet another rant about services / products that I pay for.

First the good. I bought a new camera from a web shop called cameras2u.com. It was a good price and it came the next day, and delivery was free. Plus when I called them to confirm that next day delivery was offered I didn’t have to wait long on the phone, and they had a very useful message when I was waiting telling me what number I was in the queue (I started at number 2). More companies should use this system on their phones, then you can get an idea of low long a wait you face from what number you are in the queue and how quickly it is going down.

 Now the bad. E&L pet insurance. Pleasant people when you get to speak to them, which is more of a challenge than you might think, see my previous post for an intro. I have now figured out that the best way to get to speak to someone at E & L pet insurance is to call, and if you don’t get to speak to someone within about 20 seconds, hang up and try again, eventually you’ll get someone answering almost as soon as it starts ringing.

Anyway, back to the story, I received a letter from E&L about my claim, asking for medical history. It’s been  more than three months since I placed a claim and they still haven’t sorted it out! I’d already provided E&L with medical history, as requested, over a month ago, with a covering letter explaining that our cat was a rescue cat. I had also called to check they’d recieved the information and it was OK. So I was angry. After the usual E&L phone frustration, I got through and explained what was happening, I was told to send a letter explaining that my cat was a rescue cat. I told them I had already done so, and the man put a note on the ’system’. We’ll see what happens, but I am starting to wonder if my claim will ever see the light of day.

 It looks like I’m not the only one unhappy with E&L:

 http://www.reviewcentre.com/reviews-all-57547.html

Plus see my review of E&L at
http://www.reviewcentre.com/review193365.html

 http://www.bullyonline.com/insurance.htm 

In early November a piano fell on my toe, last week my toe nail finally fell off.

 

Enhance photo  in my picture editing software has really brought out the grimness.

I also saw this intaresting [sic] business card last week

I recently received a call to my Vodafone mobile from their customer services team. I was told they were ‘checking up on whether I was happy with the service’. As a matter of fact I did have some valuable feedback for Vodafone.

I was having trouble stopping them sending me regular text messages advertising expensive multimedia services. I pay for the service, I should have choice whether I get adverts for extras. I’d spoken to customer services twice, once I was told to go to their website and change an option, this option didn’t exist, the second time I was told I should no longer get the adverts, they kept on coming. I also never received a receipt for a replacement phone, I asked to be sent one, and was told it was in the post… It never arrived.

I gave Vodafone my feedback, they seemed pretty disinterested and told me I would have to speak to customer services about the receipt. The annoying adverts, well they were part of Vodafone live, I couldn’t do anything about them! So why were Vodafone calling if they weren’t interested in my feedback? To make a bit of extra money of course. I would get a whole £25 credit to my account if I agreed to extend my contract from 12 months to 18 months. A good deal? I think not! If I agreed to this, I wouldn’t get a free handset upgrade for an additional six months. If I terminated my contract after 12 months I could get a new handset and a reduced line rental.

OK, my experiences with Vodafone are nowhere near as bad as those with Three, but I’m making no commitment to staying with them longer than necessary. Maybe next time I’ll try Easy Mobile or Orange.

It happens to me regularly. I send someone an email containing either meeting minutes with actions, or important information that they need to act upon. They get the email and don’t read it, or at least not properly, no matter how much emphasis or explanation, they won’t read it.

I’m guilty of this, I’ll read the first few lines of an email, interpret them, and leap to action, only to realize that I’ve mis-interpreted. I don’t bother to read full reviews, I skip to the conclusion. If I read executive papers, I’d go straight to the executive summary. To read things and actually understand them requires concentration and thought, but with so many distractions, this can be difficult.

At university I remember getting frustrated going through my notes because I’d have to go over the same page lots of times to fully understand it. Everyone else was flying over their notes and getting out books containing more information, because the lecturers always said that the notes only contained the bare minimum to scrape through. This wasn’t true the notes were comprehensive as long as you actually read and took time to understand them.

 Maybe in my effort to make others understand I am over-explaining things. Perhaps leaving things hanging and open to interpretation will provide better results, but I doubt it.

 In a world where we think we need to do more, more, more, perhaps what we actually need to do is less - less action and more thought. Then we’d only need to do things once instead of three or four times.

 The boss is coming… Look busy.

Somewhere in America

After my initial problems with Barclays and the £100 offer, I submitted a complaint to them. It looks like it has done the trick. I got a letter in the post a week ago saying that my complaint was being dealt with, and a phone call today with a response to the complaint. The deadline for putting the required deposits into my account for the £100 offer has been extended. It just shows, if you actually voice your concerns you may get a pleasant surprise. I’ll follow up with the outcome.

I have a policy with E&L insurance for our cat. Earlier this year we needed to make a claim, we put the claim in, and received a letter asking for further information to proceed the claim. I called E&L at the beginning of Februrary to clarify what information they needed. It took me a long time and a lot of calls to get through, each time I called, I got a message telling me that they couldn’t take my call because they were very busy. This is quite frustrating when calling an expensive 0870 number, although, looking now, there is an entry on http://www.saynoto0870.com/, but I’m not sure it’s valid for claims calls. I then sent the further information required to E&L.

After three weeks we hadn’t had any further communication form E&L. I started to wonder what was going on, so, remembering that it had taken a long time to get through on the phone, contacted them via a form on their website. After a few days plus a weekend, I had no response, so when through the process of calling and calling back until someone answered. It turns out that E&L received my letter with further information on the 10th February and are processing my claim. Good. I was told that they currently have a big claims backlog, and are up to claims received on the 25th Janurary. I pointed out that it was also difficult to get through on the phone, and was told that they had just moved to a new office and hadn’t yet got enough phone lines.

The conclusion: be prepared for a wait with E&L.

0870 7210445 - 08707210445 - 0870 721 0445 - 0870 7210 445
At 19.20 today I had a cold call from this number, it was ‘Andrew’ from an Indian call centre selling mobile phones. I found it hard to hear what he was saying because he was mumbling and his voice was robotic.

We are registered with the TPS (telephone preference service), so get pissed off at any unsolicited calls. I dealt with this call the same way as I do any cold call - I hit the mute and left the phone off the hook. He was still waiting on the line two minutes later (I could hear the call centre pitter patter in the background). Perhaps he was using it as an opportunity to take a sneaky break from the abuse of his job?

Maybe next time I should turn the call into a bit of an entertaining prank, record it, and publish it on the net…

If anyone knows who it is making these cold calls, let me know.

A bout of phone rage

A few months ago I saw in the Money Saving Expert newsletter a way of getting £100 by open a Barclays bank account. All you had to do is open a Barclays online account, and put £1000 in per month for the first two months, I would then be credited with an extra £100.

Normally I can’t be bothered to take up this kind of offer, as it can be more hassle than it’s worth. I asked people’s opinions, and was pursuaded to apply, I applied online.

A few days later I received a letter saying that my application couldn’t be completed, and that I would have to call into a branch with a recent utility bill (less than three months old) and a form of ID. So I printed out my latest Bill (online billing) and headed to the branch. I then queued for half an hour or so to speak to an advisor. It was at this point that I started to regret bothering with the whole thing.

When I finally reached the advisor I showed her the letter and handed over my passport and utility bill. She told me that she couldn’t accept a copy of a utility bill. I explained to her that I paid all my bills online, that this was not a copy but an original printout, and I did not receive bills in the post any more (getting your bills in the post is so last century). But no, I would have to come back with some posted proof of address. She told me to bring as many proofs of address as possible including credit card statements.

Why didn’t the letter say that online bills weren’t accepted and that credit card statements were accepted? I told the advisor that I wasn’t willing to queue again, so she gave me an appointment (even though Barclays ‘don’t normally do appointments for this kind of thing’).

I explained to the advisor that I had only recently applied for another account, and didn’t have to visit a branch and go through all this trouble. I was told it was an FSA rule for people opening accounts to come to a branch. My original online application never said this. I suspect whether you have to visit a branch is dependent on where you live and whether they think you might be dodgy - If I lived in a posh part of london and worked for Morgan Stanley this probably wouldn’t have happened. 

Even though I was regretting the whole thing, I thought to myself ‘I’ve got this far, so I might as well see it through’. I returned to the branch for my appointment with piles of paper. This time I had what was needed. It turned out that nearly all of the details that barclays had on me were inaccurate or completely incorrect, even though I’d entered them all correctly online a week ago. This could be the reason for all the hassle with visitinf the branch. Barclays must have been manually transferring data between systems, via printouts . Ouch!

The advisor proceeded to open the account, I reminded her that I had applied for the online account, with the £100 offer. She told me that she had used the same reference number, so the offer would be honoured. A week or so later I received account details, card etc, but no online login details.  I assumed that these would arrive later, so just waited. Nothing happened. Eventually I got frustrated and called Barclays only to be told that no, I hadn’t got an online account. I explained the £100 offer etc etc to them and was put on hold for a few minutes. They came back and told me that I could be added to the £100 list, but I only had until tomorrow to put the first £1000 in my account. Hmm, a bit difficult. There’s no way I’m walking around with £1000 cash just to get £100. At this point I asked to close my account, and after being put on hold for five minutes was told that I wouldn’t be able to close my account on the phone, I would have to drop into my branch or send a letter. So much for modern banking with Barclays.

PS A quick search for Barclay’s complaints shows that I’m not the only dissatisfied customer:

http://www.blagger.com/db4/company_id/130/companyname/Barclays.html

http://www.barclaystory.com/

http://www.grumbletext.co.uk/vt.php?t=108&subj=complaints+Barclays+complaint