Customer Service

I’ve been meaning to post about the differing styles of customer service I (as the customer) experienced whilst changing mobile phone providers for my wife and I. A more recent experience prompted to finally write about them, and to comment on my most recent experience.

BigPockets

Starting with my most recent experience, I ordered various items from BigPockets last Friday which arrived yesterday. This is about normal timescales for them, so no comment there. Unfortunately part of the order was wrong, so I rang them up to query it. They apologised for the mistake, told me the replacement items would be with the next day, and the courier would take the worng stuff back at no further cost to myself.

And that is exactly what happened.

I’ve always used BigPockets for my blank media simply because they were usually the cheapest and because they were initially recommended to me, but not out of any real loyalty. That’s now changed due to their excellent customer service.

Mobile Phone Operators

Last year I switched from a pre-pay mobile phone (on O2) to a pay-monthly phone (also with O2). I wanted to keep my number, so had to go through the process of transferring it, but they’re the same company so it should be straight forward shouldn’t it? Purchasing the new phone was simple enough, although the tariff I ended up with wasn’t listed anywhere on their website (kudos to the salesperson for telling me about it instead of insisting I went with a less suitable one). Transferring the number was much more painful though. Even though I explained to the person on the other end of the phone, they persisted in going through their checklist of “things to say to get me to stay”, and no matter how many times I told them I was staying with them, just on a contract it made no difference. Eventually I got what I wanted (the PAC code) and went on my way.

By contrast I was expecting similar problems with switching my wife’s phone from Virgin pre-pay to O2 pre-pay (for better coverage and cheaper calls between us), and I couldn’t have been more wrong. They simply asked two questions – why was I leaving (poor coverage) and could they do anything to make me stay (no) and then gave me the PAC code. Done and dusted in under 5 minutes.

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