Customer service reaches new hieghts...

My mobile contract expired just before Christmas and because of the issues I was having with Orange earlier this year (Seeing Orange) I decided I’d take my business elsewhere.

Every year we go through the same charade trying to find a new contract, something that has what we want at a reasonable price and every year the sales people completely ignore what you ask them. This year however SERIOUS took the biscuit and we couldn’t help but walk out laughing.

In our local shopping centre The Merry Hill Shopping Centre (aka Merry Hell) we have all the usual names within walking distance (in fact IIRC Phones4U and Carphone Warehouse are next to each other) so we spent an hour or so wandering around them all, having being seduced by the adverts for Phones4U I thought we’d give them a go.

First of all we were accosted by a guy on the door who, once we’d got past all the pleasantries asked what we were after. Having gone through this routine a couple of times already today I reeled off: “We’d like two separate contracts, one 2-300 minutes £20-25pm and the other 5-600 minutes £30-35pm. We’re not too worried about the amount of texts we get as neither of us text much so show us your best (cheapest) deal”.

The guy then asked me what phone I currently had, quite how that was relevant I couldn’t figure out. He then asked to see my current phone so I gave it to him mainly out of curiosity as to why he wanted to see it. He had a look at it and then told us he would take us someone that’d sort us out.

He then walked us over to some kid sitting behind a desk and told him that we were looking “for a contract* that has lots of minutes and texts** and could this guy help us?” I couldn’t help but laugh as they both had cheap matching pin stripes on.

*We were looking for two
**We didn’t want any texts

The representative then started taking details like our names, phone numbers, postcode, names (again) and then he started wanting things like home phone number by which time we were growing impatient, trying to work out the relevance. So Stacey subtly asked what relevance it had to finding us the cheapest deal. He went a little quiet and then proceeded.

Looking a little lost I thought it would help to repeat “We’d like two separate contracts, one 2-300 minutes £20-25pm and the other 5-600 minutes £30-35pm. We’re not too worried about the amount of texts we get as neither of us text much so show us your best (cheapest) deal and we’ll sign”. Sadly though it didn’t help, he just mumbled something about cutting to the chase and then told us he would get his manager to help us find the best deal.

So over comes his manager to help us, but instead of acknowledging we were there she decided to talk to the sales guy (loud enough so we could hear), he pointed out the notes he’d made on the form emphasising that we’d not given him many personal details or told him about our current contracts though why that’s relevant seeing as I told him what we needed.

The manager then spent a couple of times ticking and crossing the form and told him that we didn’t have one of the phones. Rather than telling us they then started muttering to each other again before she nodded to him and told him to suggest it. Rather than telling this herself somewhat like a parrot he repeated exactly what she’d just said, then they decided to confer a little more and again he repeated that they weren’t sure they could help us as we know what we wanted. Throughout the 5mins the manager was there, she never once made eye contact or spoke to us directly without using her puppeteer of a sales person. She then mentioned something about going away and she’d be back (hardly audible) and left us wondering what was going on.

I think the best of it all was when the sales guy felt it would be a good idea to make some small talk while waiting for his manager to return so he asked whether we were at Merry Hill shopping. Instead of then listening to Stacey’s response his eyes wandered around the shop –clearly not paying any attention to us so I said a couple of times “Stacey, he’s not listening to you” –the fact that he didn’t notice while we were talking to him demonstrated that. It was the most bizarre situation I’ve ever been in, to top it all, he waved to a friend and then a few moments later actually got up and walked away WITHOUT SAYING ANYTHING!! I still can’t believe how un-believably rude that was and I’m just glad that we got up and walked out.

Funnily enough, I have to agree with what Stacey has repeatedly said since about Phones4U –the weird people from the adverts are really the sales people…

I’m still wondering why sales people don’t take on board what you’re telling them instead of trying to sell you something that’s clearly unsuitable for your needs or just irritating you so much that you just walk out. If one of the three sales people we spoke to at Phones4U had actually listened to what we were saying or even interacted with us normally they may have got their £70 commission.

Anyways, I ended up getting the phone I wanted at the price I wanted but obviously not from Phones4U! Perhaps this is a more realistic logo?