Esat/BT and the art of customer infuriation

impr0v

Dear all,

As I'm sure any of you that have dealt with the monkey pit of esat/bt accounts and administration department know well, it's a very frustrating and unrewarding experience indeed. Anyone who has yet to experience it, and is at the moment weighing up the pros and cons of the various isps, needs to put a -10 beside esat/bt for this factor alone. Believe me, don't just write this factor off as a standard example of irish customer server, i.e. 'they'll all be the same', they won't be, they are the worst example of irish customer service i have ever experienced, and are well known for this, yet make no efforts to improve it.

My particular case is outlined below, and I'm sure there are plenty of other examples, which people should detail here also if they wish to make others aware of it, as it will be a travesty if they continue to get new custom without making some effort to sort out their abysmal attitude when it comes to simple account maintenance and customer husbandry.

I was initally an esat-fusion customer, or 'Anytime' as i think it was called, paying 60 euro for two months unlimited 64k isdn dial-up. Things went smoothly enough, besides from a few overcharged amounts, which they rectified themselves, amazingly as it would turn out. I then moved house into one of those priviledged areas which is permitted to receive the technological wonder of broadband, praise be to minister ahern and O'Reilly com etc. Taking all the factors into account (having omitted to include the '-10' mentioned above) i decided to go with the esat/bt 512k/256k business line. This had a 4 week wait time, and though I had to ring them up the day before the 4 weeks were up and remind them (by the confused tone of the person I had arranged the account with, he had totally forgotton), the technician appeared on the day and smoothly and professionally performed an install. (He was a private subcontractor performing the installs and exchange work, as i was getting the line unbundled also. Interestingly, he told me that the four weeks is purely to let the monkeys hammer the keys repeatedly until the paperwork is sorted, and that he had no backlog whatsoever, and could conceivably have carried out the work on the day of subscription).

The service itself, as well as the technical support have been pretty much faultless, one short period of downtime since the install four months ago, is something I'm willing to put up with, given the country we live in, and the speeds have always been pretty much as expected. However, no bill arrived for the install or broadband itself for nearly three months. This meant, as well as it being one large payment, not itemised or anything, I had no customer number or account reference. The usual period for cancelling an anytime account is 90 days, but they stated they were graciously willing to waive this, should the customer upgrade to iol or esat/bt broadband, which I obviously had done. I formerly requested that the anytime account be cancelled on the 1st of March. As far as I remember I had already been billed in advance for March, for the Anytime account, but I was willing to waive this, as it was probably covered in the small print of the terms and conditions anyway. Surprisingly, as i looked at the LED's blinking on my esat/bt supplied modem, they had no record of me having signed up to broadband, despite being given the address and phone number at which the service was working perfectly. Intermittent e-mails from monkey central indicated that they thought i might be fibbing, or instead expressed confusion as to how I wasn't showing up on the system. The natural cycle continued when it came to billing however, things dragged on, and I was billed for April-May's Anytime access, 60 euro.

Following a complaint from me about this matter, on the 15th of April, one of the more switched on monkeys, who has obviously since been fast tracked up to a management position, conceded that the charge had been made by accident, and would be refunded. I gave them a month to make this refund, but it didn't happen.

Despite communication to them in the meantime, after which they stated that the problem had been upped to supervisor level in order to speed it's resolution, no refund has been made. They seemed to have sorted out their broadband billing in the interim however, and are now billing quarterly, in advance.

You might say that it is an over-reaction to do this over the sum of 60 euro, but this is a company who is already charging me an inflated amount for a fairly basic, if reliable, service, which is available for a lot less in most other european countries, and the 60 euro is much better in my pocket than in theirs. I have informed them that I am going to terminate my broadband service as soon as possible (mindful of the customer unfriendly minimum notice periods written into all isps contracts), and also take a case to the small claims court to recover my money if the repayment if not made in the next 7 days.

Unless you want to have to fight about every small accounting issue with people who are obviously unprepared to have the issue sorted out, and let me assure you that an issue will eventually arise, then take my adivce and avoid esat/bt like the plague.