Direct DEBITS Credits and other myths

Taffyfella

fortheadingley wrote: »

:rotfl: By God thats funny, I nearly fell off my chair



Hmmmmm......Now why is that I wonder?????

Why is it soooo funny that someone is proud to work for their company, weird sense of humour going on there?

Fair play to BritsihGasWorker for coming on here, albeit it was inevatable there would be packs of you waiting to slander him.

At the eotd the fella doesn't own the company, lets all shoot the messenger shall we!

bargain-hunter-uk_2

BritishGasWorker wrote: »

That is somthing which you would rarley get......no energy company is under obligation to give money for somthing like that....you are a lucky person .....it seems these days that Britain has fallen badly on the " i want compensation " I had someone once demanding we compensated him for his 3 min phone call to us..i gladly gave him the 17p...

if more customers knew about 'metering standards of performance MSOP' then they too would be receiving the £20 credit which they are entitled to!
I too work for BG, and appreciate both sides of the argument, I must admit that for such a large company, we do get it wrong a hell of a lot! and i dont think it's customers being over the top, despite the way they tear a strip off us when they call!:rolleyes:

bargain-hunter-uk_2

portsmouthali wrote: »

There's nothing like generalising is there?! I've worked as a customer service advisor for 7 years and have never read from a script!! There are certain questions we have to ask (IE data protection) but we're actively encouraged not to sound "robotic", and we're allowed to use our initiative to make the customer happy - we don't have to ask permission for everything. Of course, if someone asks for a ridiculous amount of compensation I refer them to my manager (who sits 3 desks away from me BTW, not in another location :rolleyes: )

I've had terrible trouble with call centres before (*cough* NTL *cough*) but we're not all the same.

BTW I work for SSE and agree with most of what British Gas Worker said :beer: and I'm proud to work for a British company too.

Good points. I agree, we only have one or two scripts, and these are regulatory bits. at the end of the day, it's frustrating for us too, because i'm forever picking up the pieces another agent has created through not sorting it out forst time. I know for a fact that BG's new Managing Director Phil B is 110% customer service orientated... in fact he's even set up his own blog on our intranet, answering our questions internally. He has made big changes in the few weeks he's been with us, and this will soon weed out the poor agents who don't action things first time. He has removed the measures of average call handle time as he wants us to spend as long as it takes to please the customer and resolve their query, rather than say 'it'll be done', as this often doesn't happen.

I'm 50/50. I know I do a great job for BG, but again, I fully understand the frustrations of the customers. Our moto is 'Doing the right thing'... well we ain't so far, but things are inproving which is good news for all.

anniecave

getting back to the general myths thing

myth 11 - the electricity or gas company know what the reading on your meter is when the meter is locked inside your house and you know no-one has come to read the meter recently and you haven't given them a reading either

if no-one has read the meter recently, check the meter yourself and compare the reading with what's on your bill!

Hapless_2

I'll give you another myth..
A family of 6 are fiddling the meter when their electric bill for 3 winter months is £57

False, they don't use their expensive storage heaters or an electric cooker or a tumble dryer or an immersion, they use a solid fuel (woodburning) rayburn which heats the water and does the cooking and have a woodburner in the lounge with chimneys that run through the centre of the house. Their meter does not need "checking" every 3 months for "faults" or "customer alterations"! Just cos we don't line the companies pockets doesn't mean we are on the fiddle!

cannymanny

Hi Maisi, you had a contract with a service provider who stipulated a time during which an engineer would call. They did not call at the specified time, they are in breach of contract and you are entitled to claim for any expense or loss of earnings as a result of their breach of contract. (Ithink it is covered by The Supply of Goods and Services Act). Send them a claim but beprepared to take them to court. Good Luck!

gotnobread

bargain-hunter-uk wrote: »

this will soon weed out the poor agents who don't action things first time. He has removed the measures of average call handle time as he wants us to spend as long as it takes to please the customer and resolve their query, rather than say 'it'll be done', as this often doesn't happen. QUOTE]

Maybe he can sort out the processes end to end as well, seeing as they are responsible for delvering on most of the promises that Customer Service are making. Perhaps he can also sort out the acquisition/withdrawal processes, getting competing companies to make it easy for customers to leave them.

Very, very cynical about any of that happening tbh.

Another ex-BG worker.

tankgirl2000_2

Sorry BritishGas Worker but I am standing in the queue to express my disgust at the appalling lack of customer care provided by BG.

I laugh out loud when they describe their bag of bells and whistles as a "system", I have been passed from person to person when trying to resolve problems being told that the system has crashed ... more like they don't want to or can't help! (Three times in one call on one occasion!)

A debt of 110 pounds was put on my metre that no-one could explain and I was told I would have to wait 90 days to recoup the payment taken towards it.

I have told them there is a problem with my prepayment metre not accepting cards but rather than send someone out while I still had gas they said I had to wait until All credit was gone... Not exactly proactive and hardly customer focussed - my weekend was utterly spoilt by this policy as I has to cancel my family coming for my birthday lunch!

So far I have had 120 pound compensation for missed appointments - very nice you might think but has only come through involving energy watch, and I would MUCH rather not have had the hassle.

My rebate was sent to a dormant account which no-one can explain the existance of. In the meantime. I have overpaid at least 50 for my gas and am also awaiting a cheque for that. How difficult can it be to supply gas at the right price, through a functioning meter. It is, after all, their only raison d'etre If I were asking them to fix my car and they were having prolems I could understand it!

I have found the call centre workers to be either rude and uncaring or depressed by the lack of change within the company. My energy watch advisor cannot begin to unravel the littany of issues with what should be a straight forward account. What makes matters worse is that I requested the metre in the first place in order to help me manage my money, and now I rue the day. I fully accept that it is beyond the reach of individual workers to make this sick beast well, but if it were a horse, I know what a vet would do!

When all of this is finally resolved, and Lord let it be soon, I will of course be switching.

dc

gasboardonboard wrote: »

I am also a British Gas worker and very proud to say so! we are on the up again and on a customer service mission, we have the products and values right and are striving to get them all in place!

The problem is that most of your computer systems are buggy and no matter how well the staff may think they are performing, the problem will not go away.

1 million customers loss annually, says it all, first for price ( admitedly not entirely BG's fault), but now for "award winning" CS failure.
Why? because of customer frustration in trying to resolve ONE original problem that rarely get a solution first or second time around. The call queues dont seem to get shorter, because the CS model is flawed.

You cannot even get the changeover time for current online customers changing tarriffs down to six weeks.
I predict more anti BG feelings when the next bill drops through the letter box priced on the old tariff, and not on the expected cheaper say Click Energy2 one.

gotnobread

dc wrote: »

The problem is that most of your computer systems are buggy and no matter how well the staff may think they are performing, the problem will not go away.

Too right. The very elderly but functional gas billing system was replaced with two (cough) "off-the-shelf" packages that were designed to make it easier for call centre staff to cross-sell other BG/Centrica products to customers. The only problem is that after spending hundreds of millions of pounds on this software, it hasn't delivered. Bad bad news.