Are my expectations too high?

After the glories of France, some parts of my life have been awfully painful lately, and it’s all because I seem to have fundamentally inflated expectations of customer service. I think I’ll spare you most of the gory details, but let’s just say it largely comes down to telecommunications companies. I’ll give you a few samples:

I arrived in this country, and thanks to an excellent service provided by a company called 1st Contact (highly recommended if you’re moving here), I had a mobile phone number and a pay as you go deal with Vodaphone the day I arrived.

But pay as you go is expensive. So I tried to get one of those deals where you get so many hundred minutes and texts for set amount a month (this is another thing on my dollar for pound list – I paid $28 a month to 3 Oz, and I pay £30 a month here). So, I went along to the various shops and said no thanks, I don’t want a phone, I’ve already got one, can I therefore just go on the monthly plan without a contract.

No.
Why not?
We don’t do that. You will have to have a minimum 12 month contract.
*sigh*. Ok.

{Provision of all the personal details you could imagine ensues – if you move to the UK you must immediately abandon any thoughts you might have ever had of privacy if you want to either a}, walk down the street, b) buy something.}

At the end of this long data entry process, with a few computer system failures along the way, I get “sorry, your credit check has failed”.

Why?
I don’t know
Well, can you find out?
No.
Why not?
They won’t give me your personal details (huh! Like you hadn’t just had them all).
Ok, fine, you ring the credit agency, and I’ll talk to them.
You can’t.
Right, so then how the **** do I find out why my credit check has failed?
You go to this address on the internet, send this company £12 and they will write you a letter explaining why your credit check fails.
And when I explain to them why their data (whatever this mysterious data is) is wrong, will I get my £12 back?
No.
ARRGGGGGHHH!!!!!!!

So, that was a few months ago. I knew I hadn’t not paid anything, so I decided that it might be because I didn’t have the obligatory 3 years worth of credit history. For a country with possible the most open immigration policy in the world, you wouldn’t believe the number of organisations that require your last three years’ addresses in the UK. Like the clothing store I was trying to get a 10% discount card off. So far the best experience I’ve had has been getting a 30 year mortgage! (Not bad for someone who’s only got a 5 year work visa).

I decided to try again after I’d been here 6 months, so I went to Orange who were offering a £35 a month broadband + mobile deal. Now, I’d been an Orange broadband customer for the last 7 months or so, each of us reasonably happy with the arrangement I had thought. But no, through the same credit hoops, this time with the result that they would give me the opportunity to pay them lots of money every month if I gave them a £150 deposit. But I’m an Orange broadband customer I said. Sorry, we’re not the same company, they replied. ????

I was to learn this fact in far, far greater detail in the coming weeks as I tried to get my broadband transferred to my new house (I know, I promised details on pretty Mossley after droning on for so long about France, but right now I have been sitting on a train for over 2 hours because I accidentally stepped on the wrong train and so feel like a cathartic whinge instead!). Suffice to say I have been on the phone for literally hours at various stages and have now got my offer of cash back for my pain up to £100. We’ll see if this ever eventuates. (It better, I’ll need it to pay the phone bill I’ve racked up calling my new French boyfriend – another tantalising subject for another day).

My other great fun lately has been buying furniture. They have this fascinating company over here called Argos. Ah, Argos, house of the “laminated book of dreams”. This place sell *everything*, and it does so pretty cheaply by not having a normal storefront. You walk into the shop and where you’d normally see goods, instead there are rows and rows of catalogues (laminated). You look up what you want, get the catalogue number, tap it into a little machine which tells you if the item is available in store (the warehouse section out the back), write the number down on a special little piece of paper and take that up to the counter to pay. Then it’s like getting your fish and chips, you get an order number which they call out and put on the TV screen (which looks like a bingo screen) and you go collect it when it’s ready. Alternatively, they deliver.

Now, about that delivery….

We sat in the store and went through another relatively painful process to select a delivery date for me. Saturday morning, 7-12 ok. I was in a panic because I was going to be on a plane from Glasgow from 7-8 in the morning, so I made all sorts of arrangements and raced home to make sure I was there on time. Then I waited, and waited, and finally at 11am I rang and asked what was going on.

We don’t have a delivery scheduled for you today Miss Wessling (no matter how many times I explain, they can’t get the Ms correct).
Yes you bloody well do.
No, oh, hang on, looks like they couldn’t get some parts so they’ve rescheduled.
And do you think anyone was going to contact me to tell me this?? (No – it is not physically possible for a person in an English company to pick up the phone and contact a customer for any reason, whether they’ve promised to do so or not.)
Sorry, when would you like to reschedule?
But I don’t have a bed to sleep on!!!!

I got rather emotional at the guy at this point, and so he passed me on to his manager who arranged me an air bed for free to be picked up in the Manchester store. At this store I met a wonderful person who just sorted it on the spot and got me my mattress. So, I had a bed that night.

Today I’m gearing up for round 16 with Orange mobile + broadband (yeah right).