This story is mostly bad but has one star performer.
My December brought grief when the telly which had been flickering for quite a while, suddenly got worse, with the picture darkening as well as flickering.
I reluctantly used my Argos store card to buy a Philips, a brand I used to sell (car audio) and a reputation for quality I remember. It was an inexpensive smart telly with Android too.
Unfortunately, I got one with no GCE or O levels. Many o the features it boasted, it wouldn't do. I had it a few days before Christmas and a couple of days after, I called Argos and told them the problem.
Excellent fuss free customer service. I swapped it for a Sony, exchange went faultlessly. Nice telly, but the built in media player is shite. Every time you try to access files on the network hard drive, it crashes before the telly has even part indexed the files.
I did all the troubleshooting possible before contacting Sony. Three e mails went unanswered. I called them on Monday, put on hold twice and subsequently cut off. Four calls in total.
Spoke to a pleasant girl who unfortunately had no technical knowledge of the product, so I had 15 minutes of so of "have you tried turning it off and back on again, whilst facing due north and standing in a bucket of water" ?
Then I could see where she was heading. "Sony can't accept any responsibility for non functioning files stored on an external drive".
I couldn't get her to accept or understand that a file can only be classed as non functional if you can get to pressing PLAY and it spews. I wasn't even getting to play files, the browser is crashing (every time) on the indexing of files.
Then she tried to suggest that I'd played a file which had crashed so that was a non functional file. I told her that happened once,yet she was looking to steer the whole fault finding report she was about to pass on, down a blind alley.
I was rabid by the time I'd put her straight and got her to cease arguing with the customer (me), who's worked in consumer electronics, is a good and logical fault tracer.
So, it was left that the incident is being escalated to a technical "team". Can I speak with someone on that team I enquired. No came the answer. It will take 48 hours to get a response.
She is due to call me back on Thursday between 4 and 6 and I already told her I have no faith whatsoever in their ability to offer a solution considering the suggestions already made.
I called Argos customer services shortly after and talk about chalk and cheese. Didn't get cut off, wasn't left on hold and having explained the situation, had my options clearly explained and a record of my concern recorded so I won't have to repeat myself should I call again. Pleasant people to talk to and totally drama free.
Top marks Argos.
Cut to scenario 2. Virgin broadband. I switched to their fibre broadband in early October mainly due to the price they were offering for 9 months. Imagine my surprise just short of 2 months into the deal to get a letter announcing that my package was going up by £ 3.49 a month (not £ 3.50)... the letter went on to tell me all the wonderful things I could get (but all at extra cost), value added shite again.
Imagine the reception the two Virgin salesmen got when they knocked on my door the other day trying to sell me what I'd already got and then when I told them I'd got it, sell me some more value added shite.
I read the small print on December's letter today and apparently you can give them the finger even though in contract, so I think that's the deal there then...
On to Vodafone. Since mid December, my phone keeps ringing and when I get to it, it either stops or I answer and there's no one there.
I called the number back to discover it was a non urgent call from Vodafone. I managed to field a call from this number middle of last week and gave them short shrift, because they too had value added shite. I told them I didn't want any and would they refrain from calling me again, just like I asked them last year and the year before.
Monday this week, the calls started again and as long as half an hour ago I answered only to get a few seconds of silence and then the line hang up. Guess who's going to get torn a new arsehole when I do manage to get them on the line ?
Exactly what happened to customer service, I have no fucking idea. As for Virgin, back when I signed up, I could not get their website to log the sign up details so I closed the browser, as swapping provider wasn't a priority. I received an e mail with a £ 50 discount code (more than 2 months rental) if I completed by phone.
I did this, spoke to a clown named Tony. I told him twice that I had this code and second time I read it out, I just knew he was sitting there but not writing or keying it in to the system and I thought to myself, I'll never see that credit and I didn't.
As for recruitment agencies and my recent experiences with them, don't start me.
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