Modern Life

It's frustrating when you can only access a company on social media or chat bot. I have found some places make it impossible to contact them on email, almost like it's an old fashioned, defunct way way of communicating.

Yes but hear is my suggestion when I was in my last career which at its height i was working 7 days a week I used to do a holding response if I needed time

trouble with X is I have never worked out how to post so a company sees must learn

In the past week, in fact, I find my self asking, "how hard is it to read the ENTIRE email".

I spend a great deal of time attempting to articulate the exact problem, including what I've performed to troubleshoot the problem and am, without fail, responded with, not a question, mind you, but an accusation of something I didn't do which is right there in the email they're responding to.

But getting through to a company? I now go directly to Twitter (X). Though companies have started to set up a chatbot here, too... 

Having read Rory Stewart's biography of his time as an MP, I can only agree with him about how as soon as a minister gets on top of their brief, theres a reshuffle and they're moved on to another department. It's no wonder regulators are wanting more powers, and government fails to gives them any because there's no continuity coming from the top.

I agree that corruption and malpractice is rife, the rules on who and when people in government can work for, including civil servants, is long over due for reform, as are campaign funds. We just need more transparency and accountibility

IrishInManchesterUK said:

you are better placed than most to see what needs to get done, which can only be addressed by strong and draconian legislation and changes to law, with the relevant regulatory bodies being given far greater and far more far reaching draconian legal enforcement powers to correct the issues involved

I had the pleasure of working for one of the government regulatory bodies when it was created from several other public organisations and it taught me a few things about the companies we regulated.

So many of the big companies out there seem to be croocked as heck and when we could come up with hard facts about this (sometimes we had to raid them to sieze files & computers) then we were limited on what we could do.

They largely budgeted in for any fines we could give them and if we tried to force them to break up into different companies to change the monopoly then they would by and large form their own "competition" to get around the regulations.

Big businesses are like hydras when it comes to trying to regulate them - slippery, resilient and many headed.

MPs are useless in dealing with them as most end up with campaign contributions through other routes, jobs on the board for family members or any number of other bribes paid to look the other way and hold this stuff up in committee until it fades and dies.

Idealism is largely dead for business regulation from what I have seen - the OFGEM / WATGEM / CMA etc are mostly toothless.even if they are run by well meaning people.

Sorry, didn't mean to get so dark there - just brought back a lot of dissapointment from my time there.

Clearly, given your wealth of practical experience, you are better placed than most to see what needs to get done, which can only be addressed by strong and draconian legislation and changes to law, with the relevant regulatory bodies being given far greater and far more far reaching draconian legal enforcement powers to correct the issues involved and to robustly challenge these companies through the courts - I would suggest lobbying the House of Lords on this issue, as well as your local MP’s once they get elected, as clearly, laws need to get changed 

I’ve written to the House of Lords about this, because Ofcom do not have sufficiently draconian legal powers to challenge these companies and hold them accountable on behalf of customers - major changes to several areas of legislation are required to deal with these issues 

Modern Life is Rubbish. The Blur Album from 1993.

TheCatWoman said:

I think big business is using tech to obfuscate and confuse people into acceptance of Kafkaesque customer [dis]service, it should be easy but it's not

Speaking as someone who has worked on customer service for corporations for decades, the fact that this is such a poor experience in general is down to lack of investment because the companies do not want to spend money on stuff that does not make a profit.

I've been recruited time and again to come into a service department that was falling apart to restructure and rejuvinate it and it all stems from poor management, largely brought about by lack of investment.

If becomes a self fulfillng prophecy - don't invest, loose your staff who can do a good job, service plummets, customers get fed up waiting and stop calling and eventually the workload drops to the point your struggling team can manage it.

It does a lot of reputational damage to the companies and that was where I would come in - fix the team, cut off the management from interfering, return the levels of service and start to advertise the new quality of service.

Then leave as the contract was over - time for the same somewhere else and watch from a distance as the same olf rubbish managers get their hands on the team and destroy it all over again.

Luckily I never had to deal with the big service companies like broadband, utilities or banking - they have too many managers to keep at arms length while their mess gets sorted.

I think big business is using tech to obfuscate and confuse people into acceptance of Kafkaesque customer [dis]service, it should be easy but it's not, bots on websites refer you to frequently asked questions that make you feel stupid and wonder if it was a ot that came up with these FAQ's.

I think you need to remember though that someone in a business probably has pages and pages of emails a day to get through, they also have to do things like eat and sleep.

I know what you mean I have just got up the courage to go for Sky Q wish me luck

The issue of foreign based Call Centres for U.K. services such as with for broadband, is one thing that drives me insane, between that and email/online chat, which got much worse during Covid when trying to keep in touch with my family in Ireland here in the U.K. where I’ve lived for 23 years - I’ve always believed that if phone and broadband services are offered by a company to a U.K. customer base for example, that company must not be allowed to have call centres outside of the U.K., as it only increases the possibility of scams and fraud - and because of language barriers, issues are virtually impossible to resolve - I’ve been trying to change my existing broadband package/provider for years now and it is the one thing that is so frustrating