Author Topic: The Rant Thread (often contains fruity language) 23/10  (Read 1791 times)

librarian

  • Quiet please
The Rant Thread (often contains fruity language) 23/10
« on: 25 October, 2011, 11:12:16 am »
Pipex / TalkTalk, whomever you are this week.

In a previous episode, we discovered that I was mostly unimpressed that you felt free to take my current service (featuring the name 'unlimited') and make it decidedly limited. Doubly unimpressed that you embedded this with a little sleight of hand in some genuine small print of a letter headed 'a small change to your direct debit'. A more cynical person might assume that was a purposeful.

Now, I'm a reasonable man, so I send a note to the customer services at Pipex. OK, I did contemplate putting a message in a bottle and throwing it off Southend pier, which is as likely to be successful. But, begone my expectations, within minutes I had a response!

Pipex don't take email queries. Why don't I 'submit a case'. (Having some passing familiarity with the system they use, for our sins we used the same on the mothership for a while, I know you can press a simple button to make a case out of an email, but hey.)

So I copy and paste my email into their stupid engine, after answering sixteen stupid questions that have no relevance to the query I'm submitting and go to bed. The next morning, I have a response. Can I provide the information below, so they can prove it's my account? Well I certainly can, after all it's the same information I had to input to submit the damn support case initially.

Now, at this point, I could steal a tractor and drive it through the doors of Pipex's HQ and embark on an orgy of destruction. But remember, I'm a reasonable man, so I do as told and re-provide the same name, account number, DoB details.

I sit back and await my response.

Sorry, you'll need to submit this TalkTalk. Can you forward it? No.

To be honest, I live in south London, and I suspect their support services are in India, so my tractor-death-orgy isn't looking favourable. So I copy and paste the same information into TalkTalk's system. The next day, I enter it again so they can find my account, which they can't because I'm not a TalkTalk customer.

But it doesn't matter, because they can't deal with the query. Oh no, I need to call their retentions line (at my own expense no less). I'll be honest, I've written a single paragraph that perfectly and clearly states the issue, I have no wish to spend time on the telephone restating the issue. It not arguable, it's not debatable. How about you just pass it on? Ah, but they have no means to contact the retention team. Nope, owing to some mysterious cul-de-sac in time and space, the TalkTalk customer services department has no access to email, telephone, or even semaphore.

It's alright though, I do need to weigh up the benefits of being with TalkTalk. For instance, I get access to free X-Factor tickets. Which is super, since that's just want I wanted. I seemingly pressed the wrong fucking button when I ordered broadband all those years ago. I didn't want unlimited internet access after all, I wanted some shitty free tickets for an experience I expect is akin to gouging my own eyeballs out with a rusty ice cream scoop while being fucked in each ear by two horny donkeys. Of course.

They have done the impossible though. They've made a move back to BT look reasonable.