Andrew Speakman

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.