Going online to my bank account this morning I noted that I was £15 light because Sky had taken this amount from my account, which was odd as I left Sky at the middle of last month. After being bounced around from Asia to who knows where I eventually got to a Scottish customer service rep. My questions to her were why has Sky removed £15 from my bank account. Why was the sum 50% higher than my normal payment of £10 Why was the sum taken from my account earlier than it normally was. She went on to explain that yes a mistake had 'probably' have been made the good news is Sky were going to be paying me back £19.44. But I would have to wait a month. She said the increase was because I had had a discount but that had been remove and Sky are not obligated to tell their customers of any increase. She could not tell me why the sum was taken earlier than normal. Needless to say none of these answers appeased me in anyway, particularly the waiting a month to have returned monies removed from my account unlawfully. All ways best not to lose ones temper but to remain measured but resolute and eventually she told me I could stop the payment by calling my bank. This I did and again after being bounced around got a very helpful girl who indeed stopped or reversed the payment. We were chatting and she mentioned that her mum had recently passed away and she was tidying up her affairs one of which was cancelling Sky. She spoke to someone explained the circumstances yet two days latter a letter appeared from Sky expressing concern that her mother was leaving and could they offer her something to persuade her to remain. What is it with good customer service these days that companies just don't get? Of to file an official complaint against Sky. Rant over.
Good customer service is pretty much a lost art outside of a select few it seems. A couple years ago when I renewed Sky I had a great time (you know, the annual rigmarole when they tell you that your bill is going to triple because your promos are running out, so you call them up and tell them to go swivel, and they apply the same promos again). Seems the girl on the phone was simply spouting line after line of BS telling me that X, Y and Z discounts were going to be applied and activated, and that my bill would be £30/month for the next 12 months. Lovely. A few weeks later, I'm curious as to why £67 was taken from my account, call up... no record of any discounts, promos or anything of the sort, just that I called and committed to another 12 months. They then try to place the onus on me somehow, that I need to prove she said what she said, because the girl had left Sky and the recording of the conversation somehow mysteriously got misplaced. Clearly displeased, raised hell, eventually got the discounts applied that should have been from the start (actually a bit more through their poor maths), but "as a gesture of goodwill". No, it's a gesture of you delivering on your obligation. I record my conversations with Sky these days, if there's anything bill related involved.
I have from time to time recorded phone conversations with EDF, as, they provide poor customer service, and they told me that I couldn't use the recordings for anything if I didn't tell the agent I was recording the phone call. However - when you call these phone lines, there is a recorded message that tells you that the call may be recorded for training and quality purposes etc. and I have always considered that to make it fair game, they know it's already being recorded. I wonder what the actual legal standing is on that point. Sorry to derail your thread Glenn.
Working for a service provider, managing a customer facing department: It's all about time and money. Customer Services is unfortunately a dead-end job for most people. It's thankless, and quite honestly depressing. The pressures involved from internal bureaucracy and customers can be quite immense, resulting in a high churn rate of staff. This leaves the current staff burdened, so you hire more - these people are new, they don't know or understand your systems, so you invest two months training them up - they leave on the third. In your example, the lady couldn't (not wouldn't) tell you what had happened. The front line staff very rarely are indoctrinated into the seedy world of poor interdepartmental process, they have no clue what's going on, and they cannot implicate themselves or their colleagues by saying "I dunno, maybe jeff in accounts hit the wrong button". A company like Sky tastes this a few times, they dont want to invest in another costly exercise of training, so they outsource - bad move - worse customer service, but the burden isn't theirs any more so it stays that way. It's not the same for every company however - some have excellent process and systems (ahem, my department) designed to put the customer first, the staff are trained and motivated, and they don't leave after 3 months. They become experts in their areas and eventually progress career wise within the company. Some companies just get it plain wrong. Some companies are providing a service that naturally creates complaints (sky/sat, broadband) Some companies prioritise short term profit gains over long term customer churn reduction. All three together are a recipe for incredibly poor customer service, it becomes a cost centre and a time drain, therefore deprioritized from the companies longer term goals and eventually left to rot like a badly infected appendix.
You can use that recording in any manner you like. The mere fact that they are being recorded should in no way effect their demeanour on the phone, or what activities they carry out. By law a business does have to indicate the call is being recorded - but for a consumer I am under the assumption that it's a "do it if you want". Without notifying the called partner though limits the use of the recording in a legal scenario.
No derailing mate as it is a valid point. I have some experience in this as when I had a major complaint against my health board I too recorded the conversations because they would say one thing then deny saying it if it suited them, before ceasing all telephone communications with them and getting all communications in hard copy either email or letter. You are not obliged to tell them you are recording them though I did so, to which NHS Lothian responded it was illegal to do so. It is not. But then NHS Lothian interpretation of the Data protection act is quite unique as they will use it often if the truth will hurt them. What you cannot do is legally share the taped conversation with a third party without permission. But in my case I just wanted a record which I could transcribe and it did tend to keep their replies to my questions more honest once it was known that I recorded the conversations.
My brief bit of research into it suggested that if they're recording it, it's fair game for you to record it - very brief research though. And if you're recording it for your own use (i.e. keeping record, transcribing) you can do what you like without telling them. It only starts to get grey when you want to share the recording with others. Admissible in a court of law is probably a different scenario to informally sticking it to them if they attempt to backtrack as well. I've not had to use any of them so far, so unable to test the theory. EDIT: Boom http://www.ofcom.org.uk/static/archive/oftel/consumer/advice/faqs/prvfaq3.htm
For clarity: I work for Sky, nothing to do CS, so make of that what you will. You may have had a bad one off experience, but in Ofcoms 'Overall satisfaction with Customer Service' survey (2013) Sky ranked number one. Sky - 80% Virgin - 77% BT - 59% Not only that, but we have the lowest churn (% customers lost per year) out of any TV provider in the world. Obviously, I don't know the in's and out's of your particular case, but the point is, when serving 11 million customers, mistakes do occur, and it sounds like they offered you a reasonable resolution.
And the reasonable resolution was what exactly? That I have to wait a month for monies taken from my account without justification? I don't think so.
Check your contracts, they are legally binding - both ways. If you had agreed to the terms "We're not obliged to inform you" and "We can take payment on or around x dates" and "refunds are generally issued within x months/weeks" then you agreed to what happened, and that's the justification. It sucks, but it's the reality of doing business with a large corporation. Always read the small print. By the way, you can request changes to any contract before you sign. I've got BT Business in my flat. 2 FTTC connections, both on custom contracts - reduced rate, no auto-renewal, better support structure and response times with additional IPv4 addresses. All it took was two phone calls and a visit to an office in London - we removed 3 clauses and added one of our own, both parties signed. -- just realised -- I am sympathetic to what happened. I've been working in the service industry for 9 years now, I've been involved in similar disputes on both sides of the coin multiple times. I've just come to terms with the reality of these situations. If your name is on paper there's very little wiggle room.
Actually I don't/didn't have a contract with Sky. They bought over Be and I was informed that my terms and conditions remained as they were with Be unless of course I wished to add services, TV or telephone wherein a new contract would be issued.
To be honest for the sake of £15 the hassle you'll have to go through just to complain really isn't worth it. If the sum of money were in the 100's then yeah fair enough.
Probably not but there is a principle here. Also the reason customer service is so poor in this country is we Brits do not complain enough or are all to ready to accept the first bit of ******** we are offered. Companies are still using the very old excuse that it is a computer WhIch we are all to rwady to accept. When it comes to money £15 or £1500 it matters not, a mistake has been made but instead of trying to rectify said mistake I am expected to wait a month to get what is mine. All to often companies are quick to take payment but so very slow to refund when due.
When cancelling anything by direct debit it's always best to go and cancel the DD with your bank straight away. Service providers love 'forgetting' to cancel your DD for a month or two and see if they get away with it. Plus you can get the amusement of a threatening phone call when they can't get payment out of you.
I know that you mean well, but to be honest it's pretty cold comfort to someone who's had a bad customer service experience to be told that by an employee of company x that they are better than company y. Of course mistakes occur, but tbh your post isn't really any better than the sort of stuff that the likes of Scan come out with when they say that 99% of their customers are happy with their service - that's no use if you're one of the 1% that have had a bad experience.
For the record, I've had shocking customer service from all three of them, I've also had decent customer service from all three of them, but this thread is all about bitching out Sky I thought? With regards to customer retention, I think that partly could be down to a (semi) captive audience, I'm certainly in that situation. I'm not in a cabled area and my broadband speeds are poor, so my only option for reliable HD TV is Sky. I used to work indirectly for Sky a long time ago, for D&G selling set top box insurance to customers that were already pissed off because a Sky tech support person just informed them that their box was hosed and they needed to spend £100+ on a new one. I was always polite and professional of course, but some of my colleagues were, basically, tw*ts - "this is how it is so deal with it, not my problem" sorts of responses. I understand this isn't Sky we're talking about, but I promise that the customer doesn't make that differentiation.
If a company had 99% of customers happy with their services then that would be incredible. I don't think there is a single company in the world capable of that. From what I can see, Sky corrected their mistake and offered Kronos his money back, albeit at a later date, she then suggested a solution to that issue too - I wouldn't call that 'appalling customer service' in any way.
And I'd expect the delay to be pretty standard in any scenario where money was taken where it shouldn't have been, batch runs and all.
To use the word appalling was probably over exaggerating the service. But Sky CS did not correct any mistake. Sky CS did not even admit there had been a mistake. They did say that there had probably been a mistake. Sky CS did not explain the early payment neither did they explain why I had not been informed of the reason for a 50% increase in my monthly payment. If all this is acceptable to you then fine, but it is not to me.
