The Worst Customer Service-named And Shamed

The Times

July 18, 2009


Named and shamed: the worst companies for customer service

BT, Abbey, Alliance & Leicester, NatWest and npower cause more complaints than most
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/mon...cle6718127.ece

[natweststaffmember]

Re: The Worst Customer Service-named And Shamed

NatWest would have been lower but they sacked me so stuff them

[enaid]

Re: The Worst Customer Service-named And Shamed

It is what consumer groups have been demanding for years: banks, insurers and other financial services companies with the worst record for customer complaints are to be named by regulators in a league of shame.
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has announced that it is pushing ahead with plans to require companies to publish complaints figures every six months, revealing the best and worst in the industry. Overruling longstanding objections from banks and insurers, the FSA will insist that companies with the largest number of complaints disclose how many they have received, the percentage resolved within eight weeks and how many were found in favour of the customer.
Phil Jones, of Which?, the consumer organisation, says: “This is a great step forward and it is a shame that it has taken so long. Our experience is that it is often reputational damage, rather than fines, that companies care about most when they have done something wrong.”
Dan Waters, the FSA’s director of retail policy, adds that the league tables will give companies an incentive to deal with complaints more effectively and help to raise standards.

However, the first tables won’t be available until next July, and there is still a danger that fierce lobbying by the industry could see the proposals watered down. For this reason, Times Money has decided to collate its own list of shame. These are the five companies that have been the source of the most complaints to Troubleshooter since the start of the year.
Each month our consumer agony aunt’s postbag is bulging with complaints, not only about financial companies, but also about phone, broadband and energy suppliers. In many cases readers are at the end of their tether after having been ignored, put on hold or dismissed by customer service staff who seem incapable, or unwilling, to resolve even the simplest problems.
Two companies stand out for infuriating our readers: BT, the telecoms and broadband provider, and Abbey, the Spanish-owned bank. In third place was Alliance & Leicester, which, like Abbey, is now owned by Santander. Not far behind were NatWest, owned by Royal Bank of Scotland, and the energy group npower.
A retort often heard when a company is challenged on its customer service is that it has more customers than its competitors, and that is why the number of complaints is higher. But that should be no reason to let it off the hook. Just because a company is big doesn’t make bad service any less frustrating.
BT
Readers had two main gripes with the communications leviathan. The first centred on connection problems — often of broadband services — that were not resolved despite weeks, sometimes months, of frustrating effort. Some readers say that this has led to a substantial loss of income because they work from home.
The second point raised was about billing for services that were not wanted, never received or had been cancelled.
Simon Blackmore, from the Isle of Wight, has been chasing BT for a refund after being billed in advance via direct debit for a broadband account that he then closed.
He wrote: “I have never received such lamentable customer service from a company than what I have experienced with BT in the past four months. Their whole billing and customer service system seems to be in chaos. I got a refund in the end, but it was a long and tedious process.”
BT says: “We always do our best to sort out any issues highlighted by the Troubleshooter column and we will be examining how we can improve further. Our own figures from our 14 million customers show that complaints are down by more than one third this year. We have placed an even greater priority on programmes to get things right first time for customers.”
Abbey
Complaints were provoked by a wide range of problems, including bank charges and lost money and cheques. However, the issue that drove people mad was Abbey’s appalling handling of complaints. Many readers moaned about being put on hold repeatedly and transferred between departments without being given a satisfactory answer.
Karsten Moock, from London, contacted Troubleshooter after making a mistake transferring £1,734 from Abbey to her Cahoot account in early October. She wrote: “By the end of November Abbey and Cahoot were passing me around call centres in Sheffield, Bradford and Belfast before I was told that the money had been found and would be returned, with interest, within two weeks.”
When it did not appear, she was forced to make even more calls to Abbey staff — none of whom seemed willing to solve the problem until Troubleshooter intervened in April.
Santander says: “Abbey has undergone a significant transformation and IT upgrade programme since being acquired by Santander. This has led to a higher number of complaints being received, but we have taken action to address the issues and improve our service and how we resolve complaints.”
Alliance & Leicester
At Abbey’s sister company, most grievances centred on overdraft charges. Many readers felt that A&L was too quick to use the continuing bank charges court case as an excuse.
The FSA has given banks permission to suspend complaints about overdraft charges until the test case being brought by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is completed. However, readers felt that it was unfair to freeze cases where it was the bank’s error that had pushed them into the red.
Santander says: “If an overdraft fee has been applied incorrectly, then this should be dealt with normally. It is only complaints relating to ‘excessive fees’ that would be dealt with under the waiver pending the outcome of the OFT test case. If the customer believes that A&L has processed a complaint incorrectly they should re-contact us.”
NatWest
The main complaints were about administrative errors. As with Abbey and A&L, the problem was exacerbated by the failure of NatWest to deal adequately with the complaint.
NatWest, owned by Royal Bank of Scotland, says: “We take complaints very seriously and resolve 92 per cent of them without any need to escalate further. We fully recognise that by putting matters right and learning from our mistakes, we can improve service to all our customers.”
npower
Billing errors dominate the complaints we have received about npower, which was forced to pay more than £1.2 million in compensation to gas customers after failing to inform them of changes to tariffs. Consumer groups have also urged electricity customers to check their bills after a county court awarded one customer compensation after he argued that the company increased his direct debit payments unfairly.
Npower says: “We had some problems with billing as we moved customers from one system to another, but we have recruited an additional 300 people in our UK call centres and are investing more than £200 million to improve our systems and service.”
Take it to the next level
Your first point of contact should always be the company. Keep a copy of correspondence and note down details of any phone calls.
If you are unhappy with the response or if the complaint has not been resolved in eight weeks, you can contact the Financial Ombudsman Service (0845 0801800, financial- ombudsman.org.uk) or the Energy Ombudsman (0845 0550760, Energy Ombudsman Service : Home).
You have to wait 12 weeks to contact the Telecoms Ombudsman, Otelo (0845 0501614, otelo.org.uk)

[righty]

Re: The Worst Customer Service-named And Shamed

I'm sorry call me cynic but unless there are real sanctions that cost them dearly nothing will change How many consumers are going to move their business elsewhere few if any & that's assuming they could of course