*EXPLODE*

It's official. I HATE UTILITIES COMPANIES!!!! The age of technology is a public disgrace and employees with their so-called 'rights' (commonly known as 'utter crap') should be sacked. I find it shocking that I can call an under-developed region of India and receive polite and impeccable customer service and yet I call some tool over here in comfortable Britain who thinks they can just spout lies down the phone for an easy life and get away with messing everyone around!! Ok so India might ask twice how to spell "Naomi" and call me "Miss" instead of Mrs and maybe they do read from a card, but at least they don't openly lie and they are certainly not lazy or incompetent!! I have not had ONE customer service experience over the phone that has worked first time, apart from with 3 (phone network, which directs to India) and, actually, Direct Line insurance.

Here are the problems just from January this year (not to mention the millions before)

UTILITIES COMPANIES: Let's not go there. After 9 months of trying to establish our last supplier, we end up paying twice as much as we should be. The company in question still find themselves unable to resolve the fact that they cannot enter data correctly and that they had different addresses for our gas and electricity accounts because apparently the correct address doesn't exist!! We have now moved house and are still trying to claim back money that we shouldn't have paid. The new company sent us three letters threatening us with court if we didn't pay £75. When we phoned them up to say that we had lived in the property for a week they admitted that the letters were automated as, indeed, was the amount (i.e. a made up amount). How can you threaten someone with court if they haven't paid a made up amount?!? We told them categorically that they had put us off EVER doing business with them.

BROADBAND: After our last pleasant experience with a certain cable company telling us that there was a basement flat, a first floor flat but no ground floor flat (eh?!) and that even though we could show them a photo of our box on the wall and JT could hack into the modem, there was no planning permission for cable at the non-existent flat and there couldn't possibly have ever been a connection, we looked forward to an easy ride with a new company who, although admitting that the new connection could take a month, assured us that it would be straightforward and a good deal. The phone never got connected and when we called them to find out why, they said there had been a fault with the line. When your business relies on broadband, it would have been good to know that they weren't going to be able to connect us after all, so we told them to forget it and have gone for BT instead.

LETTING AGENTS: Here is where I am seriously tempted to commit crime. After *AAALLLLLLL* the trouble we had with the old guys and the wonderful Mark Rayfield sorted them out for us and got us our deposit back, I log on to my online banking today to juggle some cash around only to discover that the cheque had bounced on the day that all our bills come out. £490 bottoming out of your bills account is inconvenient at best, but if we incur any charges for this damage then there will be trouble all round. The reason? They had sent us two deposits, (one not signed) we called to tell them to stop one cheque and carefully checked which one that was going to be and they still managed to stop the wrong one (or probably both). The aforementioned 'wonderful Mark' is sorting this for us again because I am at the stage where I can't even stand in front of them now, they are such bullies. I think I would seriously compromise my integrity if I did as well...

WATER: Lots of bills arrived, all wrong.

COUNCIL TAX: How hard can it be?? After a year they finally figured out our bill but now that we have moved we are on our third bill and it is STILL WRONG! How difficult is it??? I am a student. JT works. We live in a house. Figure it out.

BANK: Normally our bank is excellent but I was a little disappointed recently to go into the branch SEVEN times before I received a debit card for my student account. Still, at least they were professional, unlike the bank that sent me 9 cheque books and 3 debit cards in the name of Faomi Turner, no matter how much I insisted that Faomi wasn't a name!!


There's more.... But I have ranted enough. I feel better now, although still a little incredulous. Why are people so rubbish?