What's your time worth?

rainbow_carnage

Last week I scheduled a re-delivery with Royal Mail. Spent the day at home waiting for the doorbell to ring. It never did. The next day I had to walk to the depot (30 minutes), wait 15 minutes in the queue, then walk back home carrying the parcel. All this despite having paid for a service that's meant to bring the damned thing to my house. Fine.

Missed another parcel on Thursday. Waited two days as requested on the card and walked to the depot. Stood in a queue with fellow RM customers for more than half an hour. When I got to the window, the man said that they didn't have the parcel and that I should come back on Monday.

I buy a lot of stuff on line, so this happens on a fairly regular basis. At least twice a month I have to go down to the depot. I don't have a car. At the best of times, it's a waste of an hour. Sometimes as much as two hours. As a freelancer, I charge £20-30 an hour for my time. The value of the wasted time usually exceeds that of the parcel.

I am so fed up with companies that don't value their customers' time. I've had the Virgin Media engineer at my house three times in the last six months. Last time the guy had the gall to tell me that I'd be charged £10 if I wasn't home when he arrived. Pardon? It's not my fault that they can't fix the problem correctly the first time. It's bad enough that I'm stuck at home for hours on end waiting for the engineer to arrive. They're not doing me a favour. At one point they offered me £7 compensation because my broadband was down for a week. Half of the world lives on £1 a day, but not in this country.

This applies to most of the companies I deal with on a daily basis. If I miss a flight, I have to pay three times the price of my ticket to get on the next one. But if their flight is three hours late, they're not responsible.

Whoever said the customer's always right must have been living in a parallel universe.

Blobby8_2

Do you have no neighbours ? Or a local shop ?
I leave a note on the door "leave it at the dog & duck"

rainbow_carnage

I have downstairs neighbours. They're home as often as I am. Sometimes I sign for their parcels, other times they sign for mine. I don't know any of the other neighbours or the people who run our local. That's London for you. If it's something important, I'll have it delivered to my husband's job or to the office where I often work, but I don't want to bother people too much with my post.

My complaint isn't about missing deliveries. It's about companies assuming that your time isn't worth anything. When I schedule a delivery for a specific day, I expect it to arrive that day. Too much to ask?

When the guy says, "Come back on Monday," what he means is, "We don't give a damn that you've just wasted an hour of your day because of our inefficient service. Give us another hour of your time on Monday."

The Virgin Media engineer gets paid for his time. If it takes him three visits to fix a problem, he gets paid for all that time. He doesn't care. I, on the other hand, have to take time off to wait for him.

There's a service that will send someone to your house to sit around and wait on your behalf. I don't make enough to justify that, but I can see why other people use it. Time is money.

967stuart

Virgin Media are an absolute waste of time.

Pretty much have to call up and complain monthly, honestly, we seem to get money every month as 'compensation' for their terrible service (or lack of).