I laughed myself silly at the news that EDF had been stuck with a mighty fine from the regulators recently. My amusement was made all the more fulsome by the arrival, shortly before I read the story, of another massive bill from the said utility firm. I have had dealings with their call centre and customer service operation in the past and I can honestly say that they got off lightly with the fine they got!
But it got me thinking about who else I'd like to be able to fine. British Gas comes number one, of course - a nastier and more customer-unfriendly company I've yet to come across. BT's offshore broadband call centre operations people. American Express's Indian-based call centre reps who call you via a Brighton telephone number and then give the game away by having to ask how to spell "Brighton".
I'd also cite Barclays. They've racked up £3 billion profits this week, how about spending some of it on customer service people with some smarts? I've currently got two written formal complaints in with the Ombudsman about Barclays and the incompetence which it attempts to mask with a cunning mixture of indifference and belligerence.
I really need to be Steven Fry. Then I could twitter my irritation with something (like a new Sony product) and within hours I'd have helpful engineers on the doorstep eager to solve my problem. Fry's QI colleague Alan Davies is currently twittering away about his problems with the ghastliness of dealing with VirginMedia's customer-facing people. He doesn't seem to be getting anywhere so far. On past experience of those dreadful people, he won't either...another one for the penalty fine, I reckon.
So,who'd be on your hit list for a financial slap on the wrist?
- login or register to post comments
- Add to a social bookmarking site
