How excited was I to see the announcements for the latest release of Spotify this morning?  It allows for connecting to friends – albeit only via Facebook, integration of your existing music catalogue and a few other bits of awesomeness.

BUT (and I really shouldn’t have been that surprised given the Facebook tie in) that the default settings for the installation are to share anything and everything from installation.

So anytime you create a new playlist it gets shared.  Unless of course you go and manually disable automatic updates.

Given all the flak Google got over Buzz and it’s presumptions on automatically opting people in, given all the grief Facebook gets for it’s over sharing it is such a shame to see Spotify falling into such a simple trap.

Oh and don’t even get me started on seeing adverts re-appear on my desktop version – I am a paid up member of the premium subscribers gang which was supposed to be non-advertising!

UPDATE: It gets worse.  After a few minutes use adverts are popups, and also taking over other areas in the UI.  On a netbook this is unacceptable as pace given over to my music is already squeezed and now it’s even worse.  Also audio adverts have re-emerged.  Not happy at all

Okay I promise to try to keep this short(ish) but felt it only fair to actually post a note to say that a resolution has been reached over my protracted escaping from the clutches of the black-hole of customer service that is the mobile network 3.

Quick back-story for those not wanting to read the 2 part monster posts (here & here); I had cancelled, tried to leave, was prevented from doing so and then charged for the privilege of remaining an unwilling Customer.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I am a very lucky person.  Lucky in that I have the great privilege of having met and maintained contact with plenty of really cool (and useful) people in the mobile industry.

I made a phone call to a senior 3 PR manager (who was on holiday), recounted the story and by the opening of play the following day the mythical 3 Executive Office was calling me to discuss.

Long story, cut short they were very apologetic, ensured the correct cancellations and credits were applied and sent me on my merry way.  Job done.

So to that lovely 3 pr manager, thank you.

To the delightful chap from 3 Executive, I thank you also.

To the senior 3 director who rang me afterwards to discuss the sneaky, underhand and downright dirty tactics of the UK’s mobile industry as a whole over the number portability – a huge thanks.

As a note: the limp and ineffective Ofcom are releasing their draft paper on number fast-portability in August, which will make for interesting reading.

Unilaterally moving the contract goalposts is not on when the Customer loses out, and especially not on when that same power is not offered up to the Customer – have you ever tried to break a mobile contract early, they normally demand your firstborn as an “Early Termination Fee” irrespective of the reasoning?

I Took the Out.

Well documented on the various mobile forums were tales of horrendously long calls, multiple hoops to jump and pathetic retention attempts by 3.  But being one for a challenge and having seen the text message from 3 that made it quite clear one was at right to terminate should one wish I leapt in.

And all the forum messages were right.

3UK: “As a goodwill gesture 3 would like to offer you £20 for the inconvenience”

Me: “No thanks. I want to cancel the contract as allowed for in clause 10(?) of the agreement”

3UK: “Have you used the 3 Like Home Service?  The new pricing is in line with the EU recommendations.”

Me: “Just NO.  I want to terminate my previously acceptable chaining to 3 for another 10 months (or so) as I no longer trust 3 won’t move those goal posts again.”

It took a number of conversations over a good 50 minutes BUT eventually I was given the terminations group and offered up a PAC for porting my number over to another network.  They even unlocked my phone for a fee, which I had to haggle down from £90 odd on the grounds that the move was initiated by 3’s actions.

And so I went my merry way.

Time for a New Service

Now I’d  like to be clear here – I like 3 as a brand; they are fresh, truly innovative (not just the usual mobile operators trick of pseudo-innovation by releasing a new pricing plan), have some great plans, lead the market with their mobile data offerings.  Hell they even offer up a few decent phones (where’s that Android handset?).

I like 3 to the point that in the following couple of weeks I even took notice of several of their newly announced shorter 30-day commitment plans.  Hell they offered EVERYTHING I had/used prior on contract for about half the price.

I visited a 3 Store and asked “Can I transfer my out of contract 3 mobile number to another 3 account, say a Pay As You Go or another contract?” which was of course met with an affirmative response – after all why wouldn’t 3 want to let me retain myself as a Customer

So last week, a good 8 odd days before the PAC expired I rang 3’s direct sales team on their 0800 number, explained what I was trying to do and ordered up a 30 day SIM.

“Just ring Customer Services once the SIM arrives and they’ll sort the number transfer”

Number Porting Pitfall 1

The SIM arrived on 29th June (the day before that PAC ran expired) so dutifully I rang through to 3 Customer Services only to be told, in no uncertain terms, that there was no way in the system my existing 3 number could be ported to this new 30 day SIM, however moving the number to a PAYG was easily done.

When I queried why I had even been sold the thing by 3 the silence was deafening.

A quick transfer to another department saw a mercifully short cancellation of said SIM and another call to Customer Service.

Number Porting Pitfall 2

The second Customer Service call was met with a similar response, it appeared that 3 was completely unable to transfer my number to ANY other product.

When I re-queried this the response was once again a true shocker;

3UK: “What I’d suggest Mr er….. Craggs is that you could use your PAC number as it has another day to go before expiring to transfer your number to another network, and then in 30 days transfer back to the 3 account you want.”

Me: “Seriously?  You are suggesting that I actually leave the 3 network to come back in a month?”

Now I love the self-belief that what ever experience I have with A.N.Other network for those 30 days will be so bad that I’ll forget all this crap and come back to 3, cap in hand begging for a deal.  But it’s hardly a sustainable retention plan is it?

Number Porting Pitfall 3

So with all haste I head over to O2’s website, check out some of their comparative plans, find myself not at all disgusted by the offerings and give them a quick call to check on that whole PAC thing.

Turns out that the 30 days expiry for a PAC isn’t 30 days to use the PAC, rather the whole process HAS to be completed within that timeframe.  Sure would have been nice to have known this previously.

Best go back to 3 and ask for another.

Number Porting Pitfall 4

Yup you read that right, a process put in place to try to make the whole porting of numbers between operators more Consumer friendly has failed me a fourth time.  It’s not entirely far to blame the porting system I know, it is at least if not more so 3’s failing but my patience is beginning to wane by now.

So back on the phone to the inevitably droll and awkward Customer Service for another session.

This time something a little different, which whilst a change was not a welcome one.

3UK: “I see you have another 9 months to go on your account.”

Me: “Really, someone hasn’t updated your system, I cancelled the contract 30 days ago and got a PAC”

3UK: “But you haven’t used that PAC and it has expired.”

Me: “No it hasn’t it expires today, but more to the point I’d like another PAC so that I can actually complete the number porting to another network as suggested by you yesterday.”

3UK: “Sure, but as the ability to cancel your contract based on the removal of the 3 Like Home service ended yesterday and you have another 9 months to go we’ll have to charge you an ETF and….”

Me: “Errr NO!  I’ve tried for over a week now to remain a 3 Customer via two attempts to port that number to a new account so the ONLY reason I need a new PAC is because 3 has effectively stalled me.”

3UK: “I understand but I’m sorry there is nothing we can do.”

Me: “Please escalate this to someone who can help or transfer me to the Glasgow team so they can help.”

3UK: “I’m sorry we have no number for Glasgow and no one here can further help.”

Me: “I know you do have a number for Glasgow and this really isn’t good enough.  3 have created the problem, 3 have mis-sold, mis-led and mis-informed me and now I want 3 to fix it.  Please give me another PAC.”

3UK: “I will go and talk to my manager who probably won’t be able to help [what’s the point of them then? bc]”…. after a couple of minutes.. “thank you for holding Mr er… Craggs, as a one off gesture we will waive the ETF and issue a new PAC.”

Rather obviously at this point I assume a win.  Now I know as a professional that one is never supposed to assume anythng but really this does look a lot like I am getting just what I have asked for, no?

No.

3UK: “Can you please just tell me again why you want to cancel your account?”

BC: “I can, but I have already cancelled it, 30 days ago but for clarity’s sake…” and I recount the whole saga AGAIN.

3UK: “Now there are just a couple of things I need to make you aware of with regards the PAC.”

Me: “Okay, no one told me anything about it last time but carry on.”

3UK: “You must use it within 30 days and we will send you out a final bill for the next 30 days.”

Me: “WHAT?!>?”!?  Er… you want to charge me a whole months fees for a service I neither want or can use once the transfer takes place, a service which I had cancelled, a service which I have tried to replace and have been held up by 3’s failings.  No.  I’m willing to pay pro rata for the month whilst the PAC takes effect for the transfer but nothing more.”

3UK: “I’m sorry but we can’t do that you will be charged for the whole 30 days.”

Me: “Right then, let’s have that PAC, I’ll cancel the direct debit and I’ll take the billing issue up with someone who CAN help.”

And that my patient and attentive friends is where we are at so far.  I have activated the porting process and by Friday should be a fully signed up O2 Customer.  Not because I wanted to change network, not because 3’s reception problems annoyed me and not because 3 didn’t offer exceptional value for money.

I’ve moved on because that value for money was delivered by cutting corners on the single most important function of any business; it’s customer service.

I’ve moved on because Customer Services, a single lone department, had destroyed my trust in the brand.

In this day and age businesses live and die by their after-sales service.

But What About That Final Bill?

Well right now it is unresolved but I am in a privilidged position.  I have contacts, I have friends – and a great many of them are working within the mobile industry.  I can (and have) made direct contact with 3 executives over this issue.

They will converse on my troubles and probably provide the that resolution.

Hopefully they will learn and change, saving all those other poor sods, without my priviledge, the trauma and pain of navigating the disaster that is 3 UK’s Customer Service.

For those of you game enough to have read any of my previous posts you’ll be aware that I do like a good rant, and none more so than about the generally contemptible excuse for Customer Service that so many UK based companies inflict upon their paying Customers.

Well not wanting to disappoint my mate Carl Martin, who even publicly recognises my need to vent, this is a tale of a true love/hate relationship, filled with joy, success and deep deep despair at just how lamentable my UK experience with the mobile network operator 3 has progressed.  And it’s a long one so to spare the impatient / ADHD / bored / uncaring I will split it into most probably 2 parts….

In the Beginning

Those of you who know me, or how have hung around here for a while also know that when my family moved back to the UK in Sep 08 we crowd sourced a mobile network service and ended up with 3 – they offered great deals, decent phones and were full of promise.

BUT no sooner was I signed up to an 18 month contract it all went downhill fast.

Issues of Goodwill

Only 3 weeks after signing up, 3 decided to drop the cost of the plan I was on by £5 a month but when asked refused to apply this reduction to my contract as it was already in play.  When I pointed out this seemed a little unfair the response I received was shocking;

“Whilst we cannot apply this new pricing to an existing plan please be assured that when it comes to your renewal date in 17 or so months we will offer you a far better deal than we ever would a new Customer.”

Now I know churn is a massive pain for MNOs and that they have whole departments dedicated to retention but honest, simple and transparent treatment of ALL Customers would surely make for a better model long term.

Note: in a similar situation with T-Mobile and the G1 price plans had seen those Customers having their plans reduced.

A Deliberate Mistruth

There was an issue with a referral payment from 3 not being paid; simply they pay an existing 3 subscriber a referral fee for new signups.  After a couple of months I queried the payment only to be told by the 3 referral team (in Maidenhead I believe) that “No such referral application was made” even though I clearly made a note of it when joining up.  Peeved I dropped the subject only to discover two separate referrals were also made, one via Quidco and another via a friend’s website, which had been refused on the grounds of an existing referral already being processed.

In other words I had been lied to by 3 about the issue, I can’t really see another way of putting it.

Needless to say a subsequent phone call quoting these pieces of evidence saw the referral rapidly paid.

99.5% Population Coverage?

And of course the usual coverage stick had to waved at 3 after a few weeks of missed and dropped calls, along with super-flaky 3G service (and 3 don’t provide GPRS fall back coverage any more).  Thankfully the lovely Whatleydude came to my immediate rescue with the Spinvox service meaning that at least I got those messages via email.

Now whilst EVERYONE has problems with coverage, and yes every MNO spends inordinate amounts throwing new cells up I’m not convinced anyone has had the response from their operator that I received when questioning 3, and I paraphrase;

3UK: “from where did you purchase your account?”

Me: “It’s on my account details but I bought it online whilst talking to a customer services rep via online chat who pointed me to your website which clearly shows full HSDPA coverage for our address, in fact it’s the same map they had in the 3 shop at Bluewater when I visited.”

3UK: “Ah”

Me: “Ah?”

3UK: “Well if you had bought the account whilst talking to our telephone sales team they would not have sold you an account, or at least have advised you that because you are in a marginal at best reception area.”

Me: “What?  But your map says…”

3UK: “Sure I understand but we have more accurate maps here and we wouldn’t have sold you the account.”

Me: “So 3 sold me an account that they should have known at the time I can’t use?”

3UK: “Well, err..”

Could I break the contract, no.  Was I mis-sold, maybe, probably.

Note: when I raised the question of those coverage maps with senior 3 UK managers at a meetup in Holborn they openly admit that there are a number in circulation (including at the time their website) which perhaps were not the best.

Data, Data Everywhere Nowhere & Filtering

An off shoot of the coverage reared it’s head during Q1 of 2009 when mysteriously 3G signals disappeared in the most curious of places.  Gerrymoth reported outages in the North, Freshplastic to the West of London and for me a train journey through S.E London saw vast areas without so much as a sniff at data.

Furthermore certain data utilising applications just didn’t work over 3’s network, from Nokia’s FriendView to Nimbuzz.  And despite much complaining 3 vehemently denied at first knowledge of the problem then responsibility or any suggestion that they might be filtering out services, preferring the old “it’s their fault” response.

No one has every actually admitted where in their network the fault laid BUT fix it they did – eventually.

As for the 3G data coverage, that kind of resolved itself for some but for Gerrymoth it was too much and he publicly ditched 3’s services.  Freshplastic I feel is probably not far behind.

Detrimental Changes to Contract Terms

And then, sometime in May, 3 went the extra mile to annoy me and every other travelling Customer by mucking around with their “3 Like Home” service and removing it from play just when i) the EU brought in legislation to regulate calls and text messaging costs across the region and ii) Vodafone launched their roaming charge removal for the summer.

A truly incredible piece of poor timing if you ask me.

They had changed the service offering in such a way to have a detrimental affect on it’s value to me and under the terms of the contract that meant I was allowed to terminate the contract without any penalty.

After all the crap I’d been through, 3 had opened the door and offered up was an out, an escape, a get our jail free from a contract not half way through.

And so this story of woe now begins, yup begins because what happened next really cemented just why 3UK achieved the lowest consumer rating in 2009 for a mobile network operator’s Customer Service.

Next time: So long (3UK) and thanks for all the fish, frustration.

I am painfully aware that this blog seems to be sliding into the realms of berating companies for appalling customer service – for that I apologise to those who were expecting more interesting and probably technical stuff but I guess right now, in these hardened economic times it strikes me as interesting that companies haven’t cottoned-on that their survival starts and ends with just how well they treat customers.

Whilst I do have another good and another bad story to share (when I find time to write them up) here is another in the offing.

Halfords “we go the extra mile” are setting themselves up for another of my rants.  The local store in Dartford has been excellent but the corporate office seem to have forgotten that they to have a part to play.  Maybe they are busy so for a few days yet I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and hold fire on the whole saga, but for now;

If you say you’ll answer enquiries within 5 days, DO NOT keep people hanging around longer.

Something I have found of UK based companies recently is an attitude towards customers that borders on contempt.

I’ve had lies and mistruths from ThreeUK, outstandingly poor service from TescoDigital, regionalised printer ink from HP and now Breville steps up to the proverbial (hot) plate with another region based excuse for lousy service.

A few years back we bought what was at the time a top-of-range Breville 800ES   espresso machine.  It’s a beast of a machine which cost us a lot of New Zealand dollars for a home (non-commercial) machine and until today has served without so much as a hiccup. 

But today the funny wee double-skinned pressurised basket (the bit that hold the coffee grounds) finally gave up.  I’ve cleaned it meticulously since new keeping the myriad of tiny holes clean and clear but flow the coffee will no more. 

A quick read around the net and it looks like I need a new basket.

No problems Breville is a BIG company with offices just about everywhere so I dropped them an email asking where and how I could purchase a replacement.  I know Breville sells them from all that reading.

The response, whilst prompt, left me cold and seething…

Aside from the appalling lack of punctuation & capitalisation it appears that Breville UK find themselves completely unable to apply any human aspect or creative thinking into retaining my long standing loyalty to their products.

A straight forward “we don’t sell it in the UK so tough” is NOT customer service – in fact it’s basically telling me that as I was not their customer they have no service for me.

A simple more human response would have been acceptable, even a “why don’t we give Breville USA or Breville Aus a quick call and see if we can source one” or a “sorry we don’t stock these in the UK but you could try…”

Not hard really.

So now I start searching for third party baskets – Saeco apparently have one that should fit.

Will I buy another Breville coffee machine – not likely.

Last week was all about TescoDigital’s inability to deliver, inability to resolve and inability to retain.  The full story is over here.

But as an update on Sunday 15th I received an email from Malcolm Gwynne, another “Customer Service Manager” (just how many do they have) over at TescoDigital apologising for the problems and  offering up £3.97 in eWallet credit – kinda like prepay for digital music on TescoDigital’s site.

I am sorry for the delay in getting back to you and that there was a fault with the Lily Allen album.

This has now been fixed and I do apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.

I have now added £3.97 to your eWallet so that you can try again.

Please go back to TescoDigital and follow the instruction on how to use the eWallet.

Grateful as I am for the credit has this helped TescoDigital rebuild my trust in them; not one iota I’m afraid.  The reason is two fold;

Firstly, the very attraction of online digital music transactions is the immediacy of them, I see something, I click buy and a couple of minutes later I’m listening to to those newly paid for tracks on my computer.

Malcolm’s response took over 72 hours from my last email – that’s too long, especially when until that point the emails had flowed freely almost conversationally.

And I guess there in lies a problem with digital communication for customer service.  The expectation of timeliness inherent with the medium.

If I post a letter to someone a week for a response doesn’t seem unreasonable, an email say 24 hours, an instant message – well instantly of course.

So for a purchase to take 4 to 5 days is just not a viable model for me.

Secondly, and I’ve touched on this already.  If you’re going to tell the customer it’s fixed then make sure the bloody thing is fixed.  £3.97 added to my eWallet – I think not!

Yesterday I mentioned that my purchasing efforts with TescoDigital over the last few days have been anything but satisfactory.  I gave them the whole day to continue corresponding (which up until my last email at 11am they had been very quick to respond) but nothing so to the world I lay bare the story to do with what you will…

Tue 10th

Email marketing about the new Lily Allen album being available for only £3.97 to download.  Perfect especially in light of i) my already having waited for just this release (don’t judge me) and ii) my new found love of buying music digitally.

09:48 Wed 11th

Followed link in email and signed up for yet another store account (can you believe TescoDigital requires a separate account to Tesco.com?), dutifully downloaded their own branded music download manager (same as Amazons methinks) and handed over the credit card details.

Download manager sparked to life and promptly complained that the download server couldn’t be found.

The infrastructure engineer in me did the usual checks; cables, firewalls; conflicting software, DNS resolution, port sniffing.  Nothing the server was nowhere to be found so a quick email to customer services was in order.

c10:20 Wed 11th

Had a quick snigger at the default subject titles thinking this the most apt and filled out a form just letting them know the error message and asked for a response.

10:47 Wed 11th

A wonderful stock response was forthcoming.  Basically it was the usual “here’s what we say you need, we won’t actually read what you have already written about the problem but could you please tell us everything about your system and restate the problem?”

Having worked with helpdesks in the past I can well understand this approach – it can weed out the silly and repetitive nonsense which takes up so much time.  BUT maybe just maybe on that original contact form if they’d asked for say i) a level of expertise and ii) confirmation that I’d already tried everything they were about to suggest the user experience might have been a little better, the process a little smoother.

Anyway, a quick response just answering those questions as required and…

13:45 Wed 11th

I’m very sorry that you weren’t able to connect to the Tesco Digital website. It is temporarily unavailable as we were doing some essential maintenance and upgrade work on the servers/Tesco Download Manager. This has taken a little longer than we had originally planned. I would advise you to try again later on this evening, please try to redownload from your order history.

Okay so they were having problems.  So why not fess up at the outset and save me some effort!

08:48 Thur 12th

So I waited until the this morning to give them plenty of time to solve their server issues. But, now the TescoDigital don’t seem to know who I am.  What I found strange was that I had actually re-downloaded the stub from their website in my order history.

Needless to say another email to Wayne Hansen (TescoDigital Customer Service Manager) pointing out that something was still broken.

09:47 Thur 12th

Again, I’m sorry to advise this error message was due to the system problems we had on our Tesco.com website yesterday.
I’ve updated your Tesco Digital account to delete this error message, please try to redownload your music tracks from your order history and this should resolve your issue.

So again I try and now the error heads into DRM territory.  Oh deary me.  Now I only chose to use TescoDigital because it quite clearly says it doesn’t apply DRM to it’s MP3 downloads.  Further whilst it does say that you can only download the files so many times and that remaining attempt are indicated on the order page I could find no indication of that usage count. More to the point I have only been downloading the stubs when and as directed by TescoDigital.

Needless to say another email requesting that Wayne actually confirms the problem is resolved before telling me to try again.

10:45 Thurs 13th

And then it happened.  TescoDigital actually failed.  Why do I  think the fail is now and not when the process broke down earlier?  Easy – technical faults happen, it’s a fact of life and I accept that, especially when the provider can be seen to be responsive and attempting to solve the issue.  The fail here was in Wayne’s response;

After 11 emails TescoDigital decide to ditch the purchase rather than fix the problem – despite it being of their own making.  I did respond to Wayne suggesting that as I actually still wanted the album perhaps TescoDigital should just get on with it, but 24  hours later no response so…

13:28 Friday 13th

I’ve just bought the same album from AmazonUK for 97 pence less thanks Tesco with no hassles at all.  Your loss.

Image via Wikipedia

A caveat before I begin – this is just me prepping up for a right good rant.  But  before I post the full absurdness of my interactions with Tesco Digital over the last two days I want to give them the opportunity to respond to my last email of this morning – let’s say the close of play tonight.

So far the story involved some marketing, a response and purchase, a failing digital download system, stock customer service answers and no product at my end.

So until later on be prepared for a rant or two.

Everyone’s familiar with how the recording industry back in the day decided that DVD’s should be locked to a particular part of the globe to enforce, well who knows what.

Then the games industry had a crack at it and Sony, Nintendo & Microsoft locked down their games consoles to only allow games bought in the same region as the console to work.

Needless to say these barriers have long since been destroyed by a community of free minded individuals determined to rid the world of Digital Rights Management.  Whilst DRM still exists in music (although Apple have finally gotten the message and moved away), DVD/BluRay and games it is obvious that the industry is wising up to the rising tide of unaccepting users.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said of the printer industry – or at least Hewlett Packard.

Our recent move from NZ to the UK meant we brought our all in one printer with us, and on advice rather sensibly removing the installed cartridges as they would clog over the months in shipping/storage.

Last week I stuck in the four brand new inks (HP 02′s) shipped with the printer, and a couple of new inks (HP 363′s) bought from/through Amazon.

No joy,  the printer bitched and moaned about being configured only to accept “02 cartridges.”  Some digging around revealed that HP region locks printers to stop one buying ink in other regions (where it may be cheaper) and using it!!!

DRM for ink!

An email from HP support states that in the Autumn of 2004 they implemented a programme “to enable customization of printers and supplies products to better meet specific local customer needs.”

Now the printer didn’t come with a note saying one couldn’t do this, the new 363 cartridges are clearly marked as being for the printer in question.  Quite how enforcing regionalisation of ink cartridges enables HP to better meet needs I am unsure.

Once I finally found a way around the 60p a minute “out of warranty” call centre and spoke to a technician it sounded like some progress was being made.  First an offer of a new printer swapout sounded great until it was established  the machine was out of warranty.

Next they offered to re-programme the printer to UK settings.  But to do so I needed to have i) a full set of NZ 02 cartridges AND ii) a full set of UK 363 cartridges.

I pointed out that I had neither, and couldn’t buy 02′s in the UK due to HP’s embargos on retailers.

So for now I am sitting here with a printer filled with new but incompatible cartridges waiting on a call back from HP to say they will either supply both sets or find another workaround.

For a company that makes it’s money on selling ink not the hardware I wonder just how much they value my continued purchasing of genuine HP ink?

UPDATE:

Another 3 calls with HP tech support and they have agreed to send out new UK 363 cartridges to replace those HP02′s I purchased in NZ.  Just for good measure I visited Cartridge World and their refill process includes a new chip on the actual ink cartridge which fools the printer into thinking the refill is a 363 – so double score.