A singularly bad customer service experience

mojoviii

Hi Eir,

Today I called your helpline to cancel my account. I'm moving house at the end of April, and my partner is stuck in a contract with another provider, so I picked up the phone and patiently waited for almost an hour before getting picked up by "Tommy".

I explained to Tommy that I wanted to cancel my account effective the 30th April. He informed me that it was not a case of "at least 30 days" notice, but "exactly 30 days" notice, and I would have to call back on the 1st April if I wanted my account to end on the 30th. If I wanted to confirm cancellation today, it would end on the 26th. I explained to him that I had taken the afternoon off work today, to make this call. My recent experiences have been that if you only join the queue after 5pm, you will not get an answer from your helpline, and my working day runs from before 8pm to after 5pm on most days. 

I get it, you're changing your service and your lines are busy, that's fine. But if people can only get you on the phone by taking time off work, due to your current lack of customer support capacity, I would expect a certain amount of flexibility with these sorts of issues.

As I didn't want to pay for more of the service than I would need, or have my account end before I wanted it to, I asked Tommy if there was anything he could do. He said he would have a look. I mentioned that as I would be working on the 29th and 30th of April, I could probably do without full service on those days, as I would be mostly moved by the evening of the 28th if that made any difference. If he could have extended the date of cancellation by 2 days, to the 28th that would have been ok with me, and would save me having to call back. He said he'd have a quick look and see if I had any options.

After leaving me on the phone for a further 9 or 10 minutes, he came back on the line to tell me that he had set my cancellation date as the 26th April. 

I told him that was not what I had asked for, I had given him no instruction to do that, and that it was absolutely not what I had wanted.

He responded that "it's done now, and there's no way to change it" before suggesting that I hotspot from my phone over the weekend if I need service, and "sure, it usually takes a day or two to come into effect so I might have service still until the end of the weekend".

I told Tommy that this was unacceptable, that he had gone rogue and cancelled my account without my explicit instruction while I thought he had been looking into options to help me extend beyond the "exactly 30 days" limit. He told me, quite aggressively, that this was what I had wanted, and that he was angry at me because he had been trying to help. I tried to explain to him that he hadn't helped, he had done the exact thing I hadn't wanted, that had prompted him to put me on hold while he looked into my options.

He got angry with me, and told me I could speak to someone in customer service if I had a problem with it. he transferred me, and I've been on hold for the past 45 minutes with no answer, and no way of knowing if I'm even holding for the correct person. It's 5.40pm, and I don't expect anyone is going to be answering the phone at this time.

Now I'm going to be left without services in my final weekend in my current home, something that I consider to be absolutely unacceptable. 

I'd like to know if someone can call me about this appalling customer service, rather than leave me having to make special arrangements with work again to get the time to call you and wait on hold, just to see if something can be done about a problem that has been created by your own agent.

eir: Linzi

mojoviii wrote: »

Hi Eir,

Today I called your helpline to cancel my account. I'm moving house at the end of April, and my partner is stuck in a contract with another provider, so I picked up the phone and patiently waited for almost an hour before getting picked up by "Tommy".

I explained to Tommy that I wanted to cancel my account effective the 30th April. He informed me that it was not a case of "at least 30 days" notice, but "exactly 30 days" notice, and I would have to call back on the 1st April if I wanted my account to end on the 30th. If I wanted to confirm cancellation today, it would end on the 26th. I explained to him that I had taken the afternoon off work today, to make this call. My recent experiences have been that if you only join the queue after 5pm, you will not get an answer from your helpline, and my working day runs from before 8pm to after 5pm on most days. 

I get it, you're changing your service and your lines are busy, that's fine. But if people can only get you on the phone by taking time off work, due to your current lack of customer support capacity, I would expect a certain amount of flexibility with these sorts of issues.

As I didn't want to pay for more of the service than I would need, or have my account end before I wanted it to, I asked Tommy if there was anything he could do. He said he would have a look. I mentioned that as I would be working on the 29th and 30th of April, I could probably do without full service on those days, as I would be mostly moved by the evening of the 28th if that made any difference. If he could have extended the date of cancellation by 2 days, to the 28th that would have been ok with me, and would save me having to call back. He said he'd have a quick look and see if I had any options.

After leaving me on the phone for a further 9 or 10 minutes, he came back on the line to tell me that he had set my cancellation date as the 26th April. 

I told him that was not what I had asked for, I had given him no instruction to do that, and that it was absolutely not what I had wanted.

He responded that "it's done now, and there's no way to change it" before suggesting that I hotspot from my phone over the weekend if I need service, and "sure, it usually takes a day or two to come into effect so I might have service still until the end of the weekend".

I told Tommy that this was unacceptable, that he had gone rogue and cancelled my account without my explicit instruction while I thought he had been looking into options to help me extend beyond the "exactly 30 days" limit. He told me, quite aggressively, that this was what I had wanted, and that he was angry at me because he had been trying to help. I tried to explain to him that he hadn't helped, he had done the exact thing I hadn't wanted, that had prompted him to put me on hold while he looked into my options.

He got angry with me, and told me I could speak to someone in customer service if I had a problem with it. he transferred me, and I've been on hold for the past 45 minutes with no answer, and no way of knowing if I'm even holding for the correct person. It's 5.40pm, and I don't expect anyone is going to be answering the phone at this time.

Now I'm going to be left without services in my final weekend in my current home, something that I consider to be absolutely unacceptable. 

I'd like to know if someone can call me about this appalling customer service, rather than leave me having to make special arrangements with work again to get the time to call you and wait on hold, just to see if something can be done about a problem that has been created by your own agent.

Hi mojoviii

Can you pm me the following details please and I will look into this for you. 

Name
Account Number
1st line of address
DOB
Are you the account holder?

Regards

Linzi

mojoviii

Hi Linzi,

I sent you those details this morning. Looking forward to hearing from you.

eir: Linzi

mojoviii wrote: »

Hi Linzi,

I sent you those details this morning. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Hi mokoviii

Your notice period has been extended to 30th April.

Kind regards

Linzi

mojoviii

eir: Linzi wrote: »

mojoviii wrote: »

Hi Linzi,

I sent you those details this morning. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Hi mokoviii

Your notice period has been extended to 30th April.

Kind regards

Linzi

Linzi,

Many thanks for your help with this, I really appreciate it! Now that this is resolved, should I delete this thread?

Kind Regards

eir: Linzi

mojoviii wrote: »

eir: Linzi wrote: »

mojoviii wrote: »

Hi Linzi,

I sent you those details this morning. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Hi mokoviii

Your notice period has been extended to 30th April.

Kind regards

Linzi

Linzi,

Many thanks for your help with this, I really appreciate it! Now that this is resolved, should I delete this thread?

Kind Regards

Your're welcome.  You can delete this thread if you want as it is the last day of boards support tomorrow.

Thanks

Linzi

Trudiha

Make sure you cancel your direct debit with your bank, I’ve just had three months of extra direct debits taken, which has resulted in another 4 hours on the phone to Eir.