Once upon a time, there was an expat who moved to London. After his banking customer experience, he had lost all hope in the ability to have anything process oriented happen here in London without a ton of red tape, complications, miscommunication and just plain lack of attention to detail. Then the wonderful John Lewis entered his life and it was like the skies parted and the sun shone like it never had before. And he lived happily ever after…..
If only the story ended there…
SkyTV is the largest TV provider here in London, it’s like Direct TV or Dish TV on steroids, owned by Sir Rupert Murdoch of the evil Fox and BSKYB empires. They are the necessary evil for great HD programming. There’s also Virgin Media – which is cable, FreeSat and FreeView which are also ways of receiving programming, neither of which are truly free and all require a box and verification to be activated.
The list of channels is amazing and they make it actually cost effective to have more channel packs than not, including the sports stuff to watch football or rugby, movie channels coming out your eyeballs and enough terrible reality TV shows to make your hair stand on end – including the sensational My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, Tool Academy UK, and yes, Jersey Shore. When I was in my temporary place, I was finding myself mesmerized by all of these. Of course, your American favorites are here too, like Grey’s Anatomy, Cougar Town, How I Met Your Mother and CSI: Miami – which ironically, is the highest rated television show outside of the US.
But I digress….
Lovely John Lewis delivered all of my things on Tuesday with no problems, to the point of in and out in minutes, while providing everything with a smile. I had my obscenely large 50″ TV delivered on Tuesday as well, and had taken Wednesday off of work to meet the engineer from Sky, well, not really Sky, a contractor of Sky. I wake up bright and early on Wednesday morning to greet the installer, as they told me he would be there between 7am and 1pm. I haven’t heard a confirmation call by 9am, so I call to ask for the confirmation. The new person tells me that they will be there between 12pm and 7pm and not to worry. I think it is odd that I haven’t heard from anyone by 130pm, so, I call again. Mind you, there’s no food in my house as I haven’t had time to grocery shop. Nor is there any internet connectivity, so, I cannot work from home. I dash out to this overpriced Serbian deli that’s right around the corner and grab three empanadas and a Coke Zero, rushing back, just in case I miss them.
Four more hours of waiting go by and I am really concerned. I call and I’m connected to a nice Geordie boy named Kevin who sounds a bit like he’s thirteen, and he’s amazingly happy to help and then says “Hang on. That’s odd.” Anytime a customer service rep says “That’s odd”, it is never, ever good. Kevin then tells me that the engineer had called in at noon and said that I already had Sky and that the ticket was closed. He puts me on hold and calls the engineer and then tells me to call back in 30 minutes if the engineer hasn’t called back. I then proceed to call back every half hour and find that the engineer has not called either him or me back. This goes on for four hours. I ask to be connected to a manager and they have gone home for the day, and the manager is supposed to return my call in the morning.
I’m pretty livid, since I took the day off work to have this happen, I had no internet, expensive food and no shower by 8pm. Very grumpy Jeff.
The next morning, I call immediately at 8am and speak to a lovely woman named Danielle who reads the voluminous case notes, and she says, I’ll connect you to the manager right away. The manager’s number is busy, but Danielle agrees to have the manager call me, and decides to email her as well copying me. I say, that’s lovely. Then, Danielle asks me “What’s your contact information?”
I give it to her and she says “That’s odd.”
Again with the “That’s odd.”
Danielle says “That’s not the number that we have for you, let me get your real contact information and I will have Mel, the manager call you right away.”
The wrong number. They have the wrong number.
I get Danielle’s email, and Mel calls me within the hour. She is an absolutely lovely woman, bubbly in personality and perfect for her customer service manager job. She apologises profusely and says “I cannot believe that you called ELEVEN times and not one person until this morning asked to confirm your phone details. I have made heads roll in my department, and I’m sorry this had to happen to you. Mike, my best engineer will be out first thing tomorrow morning at 930am and here’s his mobile number just in case. ” She also offered three pay per view movies on my account, which I can use at any time.
This morning, Mike was right on time at 930, set up the box, authorised the service and then spent ten minutes teaching me all of the features of the insanely complicated remote control. He was absolutely great and was gone within twenty minutes. While this had the potential to be really terrible, it was an amazing experience, all in all.
Orange Broadband has been interesting as well. The lead time for a new install for a phone line and broadband is a 25 day window.
That’s right. A 25 day Service Level Agreement to turn on an existing line, send broadband equipment, give you the actual landline, and activate the service. We are right now in day 17. On Monday, I should receive my broadband equipment which will be able to be activated that day. The phoneline will be active on the following Tuesday, even though the voicemail is active, I have the number, but there’s no dial tone.
In this case, I’m being pretty zen about it, I just end up going out and doing interesting things with interesting people on the nights that I would normally be at home watching My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding in my underwear, eating mint Aero chocolate and drinking a nice Cotes de Provence rose.
Maybe this blip in connectivity isn’t a bad thing.
American Expat in London 