Category: Headaches

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.

Customer service in London is absolutely deplorable.  Having been in customer services roles for most of my career, I know a little bit about this topic.  Service is not hard.  As my friend Rachel says (both about service and in life), “People either get it or they don’t. There’s no in-between.” As my story with the bank details, it often takes herculean efforts to get anything done either inside or outside of an existing process.

BTW, mind you, the bank account issue finally closed on Friday – almost a month after initially trying to open an account. However, I have been denied credit EVERYWHERE as I have no credit history in the UK. An American college student would have a better chance of opening a Visa card than me. The mobile phone company for a 10GBP monthly subscription said no to a yearlong contract for a mobile broadband SIM card, even though I could have prepaid for it with the cash in my pocket.  Ludicrous, but I digress.

The stories of bad customer service abound here in this country.  Even my manager at work had an issue over the weekend related to returning a faulty appliance to a discount store.  In a nutshell, he went in without the receipt, but with his credit card statement and the reference number.  The woman was outright rude to him and went so far as to quote the Sale of Goods Act of 1979 that dictates return policies here in the UK.  He then drove to another location for this company ten miles away, and they did the return with no issue. If only it ended here.  He drove back to the original location, queued up for the same woman, and proceeded to tell her how terrible her service was and that her lack of understanding of the companies processes and the law made him have to waste an extra hour of his day to get the right thing done.  He asked to speak to the manager, and she said she was the customer service manager.  REALLY?

After that, he said, “I want to speak to the store manager.” She told him that he wasn’t there, and that he would have to come back at another time.  Then, another manager overheard the conversation and said, “I am the store manager.” My manager replied, “funny, she just told me that you weren’t even here.” He looked at the original woman and said, “Do you often lie directly to your customers, or is that just something you do when you’re wrong?” The store manager quietly pulled him aside to talk and my manager walked away with a discount for the next time that he shops in the store. The funny thing here is that this is often the norm, not the exception.  So much so that it has become a topic in our team meetings.

The pleasant thing is that there is a definite exception to the rule here: John Lewis.  John Lewis is a mid to high range department store with a food hall like most of the other major department stores here in London.  For you Americans, imagine Nordstrom, with certain things that are the price of JcPenney.  Affordable luxury with higher value on service for which a customer like me is willing to pay.  They also own Waitrose, a higher end grocery store, with a larger specialty selection of groceries than your Tesco or Sainsburys.  It’s similar to Whole Foods, in a sense, without the faux granola feel.

My John Lewis experience has been nothing but pleasant.  Sellers in their shops who are knowledgable with no high pressure sales.  People who say hello, are genuinely concerned with your experience as well as fulfilling your needs.  I went to three different John Lewis stores to test out mattresses and ogle TV’s.  In EVERY situation, I was greeted in each department and the person stayed with me to ensure that I had all of my questions answered.  However, they left me alone enough to make my own decisions in a hands-on sort of manner.  I told them that I was most likely going to place my order online, and they printed out the exact things at which I was looking for me to make a decision on my time. And, they price match, offer a longer warranty and deliver for free over a certain amount.

It does not stop there.  Their customer service representatives on the phone for the delivery and order were genuine, friendly, genial and extremely thorough.  I placed two separate orders and my flat mate placed one.  Originally, we had three different delivery times.  But, the person who called me this morning to confirm delivery noticed the three orders to the same place and made sure that the orders were going to come on the same truck a the same time.

The overall selection, service and experience has been top notch and I will continue to shop there and at Waitrose again and again.

I made a commitment to myself early on that I would not publish anything that was just a complete rant. So, keep me honest by flailing me in the comments – either here or on Facebook – if this degenerates into that type of communication. I mean it.

Bar none, the most difficult thing that I have had to tackle in this relocation has been the quest for the Holy Grail to open a bank account without a permanent address or a utility bill or a paystub, even with the sponsorship letter that my company has provided, the Tier 2 Intra-Company Transfer Visa that the British Embassy has already approved, a guarantee of my monthly salary or multiple letters to the bank with which my company has a Global Partnership for specific situations like this. Without being too dramatic, I have been to three different branches of this bank on four different occasions over the course of two weeks to try to complete the transaction of just opening a Current (Checking) account to ensure my first pay check can be deposited. It is absolutely maddening. It appears that the relocation company did not know the process, the branch managers did not know the process and the outsourced HR department did not know what happened after they sent the letter that they created to the Global Partnership Manager, making them unable to answer any of my questions.

In any case, the absolutely stellar manager and account agent at the branch today got me further than anyone else, though I will still have to wait up to three business days for my account to be finalised and created. Banking in Britain is the penultimate in bureaucracy, as shown in the beginning of this Monty Python skit. It probably got a little better once technology was introduced, but with the epic failure and subsequent nationalization of multiple retail banks, the complexity became exponentially larger. Add to that, the real fear of terrorist money laundering by expatriates and you have yourself tied up more than the phone lines to a radio station for NKOTB tickets in the early 90’s. I do not blame the service people in the banks; they are clearly collateral damage. There is no need to yell at them as it will not do any good. It’s just the system. In the US, you can get a bank account with a piggy bank full of pennies and a cute smile. Here it takes a ton more than that.

What have I learned from this situation? Ask FIRST about the banking assistance included in your relocation package. If you are being sponsored by a company, find out who their global banking partner is in your future country right after you speak with the relocation company. Most of the large retail banks have some sort of Premiere Global Banking service, like HSBC, Barclays and NatWest. In these situations, they will need for you to fill out a special application which will require the following:
■ A sponsor letter from your employer, including annual salary, monthly allowances, and bonuses.
■ This must include your past address from your home country and start date.
■ Also, it needs to include your joint account owner if married or partnered.
■ A verification of your identity notarized by a lawyer or an onsite branch officer.
■ A visa that has been verified after entry to the country.
■ Passport number and other form of identification

If you aren’t sponsored by a company, it will be exponentially more challenging. You need a permanent address, a passport, work or student visa and a utility or council tax bill that has your name on it. Now, that is completely counterintuitive from how it is in the States, where you cannot get a place to live or a utility bill without a bank account. Be prepared to provide references and never assume that you have given enough information, even if they have told you that you have. Follow-up is key.

Last but not least, the process is inordinately slow to do anything related to banking applications in the UK. Things get mailed places, hard copies are required and you can count on the fact that anything of import will take five to seven business days to resolve. Plan accordingly, as escalation or expedition is not possible in most cases.

Anyway, I am through most of it and may only have to wait two days more to get to deposit my first paycheck. Woohoo!