Metropol

Why are we not allowed to mention him when he keeps breaking his end of the bargain and popping up again?

Jovis wrote:Why are we not allowed to mention him when he keeps breaking his end of the bargain and popping up again?

Ask Gav. He's policy, I'm technical.

the worst call centre experience i have had was with london midland's which is in bombay. unfortunately every published number for london midland ends up with you talking to this telesales dept who attempt to sell you a ticket no matter how many times you say you want to speak to a specific dept. i had one of them who didn't understand what a marketing department was and told me in no uncertain terms that i was talking to a train company and they did not hold markets. they point blank refuse to put you through to the company's office in england and claim that they don't have a supervisor - and when they give you a name it is always something like "rocky", which is laughable. their incompetence isn't limited to one operator either as i phone up several times and got absolutely nowhere - a couple of them even answered the phone "good morning central trains" ... london midland's predecessor :roll:

whenever i call lloyds bank i will hang up until i get put through to the english call centre, i find this indian operators offer me no more information than i can find out myself on the website. when you want specific information about the terms of a product or even something simple like the clearing period for a payment they are useless.

I do love Orange. Being on Orange Premier (as a long standing customer) I always get through to Newcastle instantly with "Good evening Mr Hewitt how are you" I feel posh.

How long standing do you have to be to get on Orange Premier? I was with orange continuously from mid 1999 to late 2005, same SIM card and all (when on holiday I sometimes went over £50). Admittedly it was pay as you go rather than contract but I was never particularly light use and was regularly putting on more credit than the average contract payment at the time. They never offered me anything, all my handset upgrades were sorted out and entirely funded by myself (presumably they thought that in 2005 I was still using a single-line Philips PH301 and was happy with it). My pay as you go tarriff didn't change after 2000 (except for text messages increasing) and the benefits which newer PAYG'ers got never applied to me.

When I quit them for 3, the call to retentions was still handled by a particularly inept international call centre, where their efforts to retain my business essentially boiled down to 'please don't go because if you go we won't have your money any more' - nothing was actually offered.

Makes me wonder why I went back to Orange really.

cwathen wrote:How long standing do you have to be to get on Orange Premier?

Well in my case its been continuously since 2000 with 5 years on PAYG and then contract after that, there was one point where I spent £100 in one bill (only happened once) which might have triggered something too.

Also being on premier they seem to treat me better, I questioned the fact that my "brand new identical contract" had 100 less texts that the last one and within 15 seconds was given an extra 250 free texts as an apology.

I've now managed to wangle my way from Racoon 30 at £30 a month to having the exact same contract with an extra 150 texts for £15 a month and a free phone on top.

Hymagumba wrote:given an extra 250 free texts

Per month?

cdd wrote:

Hymagumba wrote:given an extra 250 free texts

Per month?

of course

I worked at the Orange call centre in Plymouth for a couple of months when I first left the Civil Service. In the Premier and Pay Monthly teams (where I was) there was a great deal of freedom to add freebies onto accounts. Every customer was given a rating depending on how high their bill was, whether they always paid on time and how long they'd had the account. This rating also determined what type of phone you could get as a free upgrade, but that was the only thing that was checked by the system. Essentially you could add anything onto an account and it wouldn't be checked.

One girl on our team was leaving so she kindly added 1000 free texts a month onto the accounts of everyone she knew who was on an Orange contract.

My friend works in a call centre for a well-known japanese car company with a famous robot. He describes it as "being spanked by a fat geisha for the amusement of middle-management while simultaneously receiving an ear full of excrement courtsey of the Great British Public, and engaging in public deception regarding Asimo. If anyone knew he'd murdered six engineers in a fit of sexual rage there'd be hell to pay".

Oh, now it's "feigning sympathy for idiots with small problems".

Anything like that, stu?

Sput wrote:Anything like that, stu?

Similar, but most definately without any cybernetic sexual rage to cover up. There was certainly a degree of offensive calls from the public and dealerships, but they were generally in the minority. On the ocassion you got a really nice caller it provided an incentive to go out of your way to do alot more for them.

Sycophancy and fawning was certainly encouraged but not often exercised, unless you knew your call was being monitored by the 'buzz-word chanting' and 'customer-obsessed' management.

Anyhoo, my attempts to move virgin to the supposedly unserviced flat met with little help today. The guy on the phone fully accepted I have a hookup point in my lounge but, since their system still claimed it had never been serviced (possibly due to a renumbering of the flats). The workaround would be getting written permission from the landlord to get an install (to satisfy their system) and then do absolutely nothing. How tedious. tsk. I'm going to ring up again and see if someone can override it.