Apologies to those who have been following along & sharing their experiences, I've been a bit busy at work since my last update.
Things have moved along, but they got much worse before they got better.
Saturday I was on the phone bright & early & went through the whole story again with a new advisor who informed me that nothing had been ordered again, so round & round we went. Eventually I got a bit annoyed and demanded to know why I keep being lied to and why everyone seems to be so incompitent. I also said that if they couldn't solve the issue, then they could cancel the upgrade and put me back on my old deal. The advisor told me I was being transferred to a manager to sort out the problem. Instead it turns out I was transferred to the retention team.
Now I don't know what was going on with this woman in retentions, but from her attitude you'd think I'd just broken into her house and took a steaming great dump in her cereal bowl. Her rudeness was unlike anything I have ever experienced (and I've done 20 years in retail) she sat in complete silence whilst I explained everything that had happened. By the end I was getting worried she had dozed off, but then she angrily fired back that everything that had happened was my fault. I should have known what the VM procedure is for replacing faulty items, I should have known the correct person to report it to, I should have known how replacements are delivered, if there is an issue with stock and I should have known the timescales involved. All quite baffling really. I told her that I wasn't at all happy, and if they can't sort my issue to cancel the upgrade. I also said that because of the way she spoke to me I felt like I should be cancelling the whole service all together. FINE! she said, I'll cancel it right now & put the phone down!
After a couple of hours of seething, during which time I filed an official complaint. (waste of time that form is) I decided that I couldn't be left with no service, I knew I had a few days working from home this week, so tried calling back & going direct to retentions, with the hope of speaking to someone who actually gives a **bleep**.
Luckily I managed to speak with a lovely lady named Julie.
Julie is great, she knows about customer service. She listened intently whilst I went through all the drama again, she umm'd an ahh'd and tutted in all the right places whilst I explained about the issues. She actually genuinely cared and I believed her when she promised to make things right. The first thing she did was make notes about everything, then she told me that although she wasn't an expert or miracle worker, she did have some contacts who she believed could help. Julie took my number & promised to call me back after speaking to her contacts. Amazingly after a few hours, she was back on the phone again. She had arranged with the head of the faults team, for an engineer to come out with a replacement. No mean feat, as he had to send through a special request, with a lot of jiggery pokery to make sure it wasn't cancelled off. The appointment was booked for Monday between 4-7.
Now considering this was booked in saturday afternoon, by monday I must have received 10-12 messages via text/email asking if I had resolved the issue myself and that I could cancel the appointment. Eventually the engineer rang on monday afternoon, he told me he could see that my internet was live and would I still need him to call?????
When he did eventually arrive, I expected just a straight swap out on the doorstep, but to his credit he said that he would rather install the modem whilst he was here & check everything was 100% before he left.
Good job really as it turns out things didn't go smoothly, although swapping the modem was a 2 minute job, trying to get it registered and activated had him stumped for well over an hour, no activations were going through. Once finished he told me that had I attempted a self install, I would still be there days later ripping my hair out.
Obviously as soon as he left, the first thing I did was run a speed test! Interestingly that very first Samknows/Realspeed test returned a result of around 500 download / 942 upload. Unfortunately this was short lived as I tried again a few minutes later & the Gig1 had kicked in at the expected ratio with the upload maxing out at 52.
So my takeaway from all this, is that if anyone is having problems and feel they are not being listened to, the cancellations team seem to be the only department who cares and if you don’t get the response you want, put the phone down, then call back and speak to someone else. Although it took me a few goes to finally speak to that person.
