Foraying into the field of service provision, I now have a well-formed view of "what it should be like" to give good customer service. It's not hard, it really isn't. Why then have I spent the past two days "dealing" with an Internet service provider? Tiscali, let's make it clear.
Having blown off BT for abominable customer service, I gave Tiscali a chance. (If I am to be entirely honest, I wanted to give Virgin Media a chance but they don't "service" our area). Nevertheless, lessons learned from BT made me wiser and more assertive about my extraordinarily reasonable service provision expectations. On the phone to the Tiscali Sales - a promptly answered call - I felt that I had all bases covered.
"Can I please put My Boyfriend, whom I live with and who uses the service, as a named person so that should there be any faults or queries, he is also able to phone you directly."
"Absolutely!" came the reply. "Why don't I just go ahead and take his information down for our records?"
Wonderful.
You can see it coming, can't you? The day dawns, a Tuesday, when My Boyfriend has to make that call. He got as far as: "We'll need to send an engineer out to your house." Excellent, he says, please do. "Erm, well, actually, I can't take that instruction from you." You what? "Erm, data protection (voice becomes muffled) so you are erm, not authorised."
I won't bore you with the rest, although I feel I should: as a warning. It's taken two of us, two days talking to four different people, to send someone between 11 and 1 p.m. They have yet to arrive. Time of posting: 2.15 p.m.
Do you recommend Sky? Are they good?