Should larger businesses pay for your personal time lost using help facilities?

Davesquire · 18 April at 10:48AM

I have found myself losing an increasing amount of my personal time dealing with poor administration, product quality/description/instructions/etc. when contacting large organisations.

This is especially the case when using bots ( capable of solving problems of 7 year olds and below),

or the good old “ We’re sorry, but all of our agents are busy right now”

- translation: “As a £multi-billion organisation, we’re not prepared to provide an adequate back office to resolve our mess”.

Isn’t it about time that we were compensated for that loss in personal time?

flaneurs_lobster · 18 April at 11:03AM

I'm sure you don't mean the poll to be taken seriously.

Take one example.

If I want to renew my car insurance I use an online comparison site, get coverage, drive my car. Any changes/queries/claims to that policy then I'm on hold to their helpline for what seems like hours.

The insurance costs £200/yr.

I could use a broker (as I used to), they do the searching for the best policy, sort out the form-filling. If I have any changes/queries/claims to that policy then I talk to my broker and they sort it out.

The insurance costs £400/yr.

Which would you choose?

I can somehow see some merit in considering compensation when there is no choice in the method of communication with statutory bodies (Government, Local Authority etc) but when your choice of supplier of goods or services is predicated largely on price then you will have to accept the service levels that go with this.