Complaining

This might well be a symptom of irritable male syndrome but when I attempt to spend my money in the various retailers and vendors across this country I expect them to work just as hard as I have too to earn their money. I mean I am not a subsidiary of the National Lottery Fund wandering around giving my money away. Like most of us I work hard for my salary (when I’m not blogging of course) and I expect a certain level of service.

So I am a bit of a complainer. In restaurants for example I have certain standards that I expect to be met.

I don’t have to stand around for ages waiting for a waiter/ress to show me to a table
I expect them to come back after a reasonable amount of time to take the order
I expect the food to come to the table after a reasonable amount of time
I expect it to be edible and hot (unless it’s a salad)

Not too much to ask – is it?

Similarly when entering a shop to purchase something, I expect to be a least acknowledged by the salesperson, not totally ignored while they either chat about getting drunk last night on the phone or pretend to shuffle some papers under the desk, because after my patience is tried in these situations (after about 2 minutes usually) I will get the persons attention, remind them that I am a customer and that I wanted to spend a lot of money in their store but now I am taking my wallet elsewhere.

So this week, as I have been wizzing across the country I have had two examples of bad service and have had to complain.

The first is when I went to Croydon (O Croydon doom doom doom) and after a long day, (I had set off at 6 ish in the morning) and having done all my stuff in Croydon it was getting on for 7 in the evening and I was hungry and needed a rest from driving so I entered the Moto sevices on the M4 near Reading only to find all their cooking facilities down with a technical fault – no problem the next Moto was only 20 miles down the road so off I went. When I got there all their facilities were working, it was just that they were closed! At 7:00pm in the evening. The only hot food on offer was fish and chips or Burger King! (Remember I’m a veggie) There wasn’t even a salad!

I thought I had warped back to the 1970’s and was experiencing the time when England was shut down at 6 o clock and you could only drink until 10 o’clock. I spoke to the manager who did apologise but said I should be there in four days time because the place will be fully open then. (good logic – I’m hungry now so come back in 4 days) Anyway the long and short of this, is that the next day from the comfort of my office I winged of an email to their customer services and two hours later had a humble apology on the telephone and the next day twenty quid in vouchers in the post.

The next was British Gas. I recently decided to change suppliers because the new supplier will sell me Gas at a cheaper price. So last night I had a telephone call from their call centre asking me why I was changing. I thought I offered a reasonable answer such as ‘because they are cheaper’ when the caller started to get quite aggressive with me, not particularly rude but his tone and they way he seemed to suggested that I was so weak minded that I hadn’t understood the contract that I had signed with NPower. I had to remind him that I actually did have a degree and a doctorate and was pretty sure that I had understood the nature of the contract.

But what got me was this notion that somehow I was at fault for leaving them not they being at fault for offering a service that was not competing in the marketplace. I complained to their customer services too. I am expecting a parcel of gas through my letter box shortly.

I think it is right to complain, if you have a fair and righteous complaint. I couldn’t be like the guy I saw in moto who bought his fish n chips and only ate half the fish and left the rest of the food because it was so bad and then walk out of the place without a word, like it was his fault that he couldn’t eat the shit they were serving!

Complainers of the world unite you have nothing to lose but your money!