Customer service campaign against phone line waiting times and 087 and 084 numbers

[NoelNoel]

Does anyone know if anyone is running a campaign against companies using expensive 0870 and 084 phone numbers for customer complaints, and making customers hang on in lengthy Muzak queues while paying for the privilege?

I have recently had a shockingly bad experience with O2 customer service, when I tried to upgrade one mobile phone and ended with my cancelling two contracts I had held for nearly 10 years.

So if there is not such a campaign, I plan to start one and would like to hear from any potential supporters.

It is entirely wrong that consumers have to pay extra to lodge a complaint -- especially if any portion of that call cost actually goes back to the profits of the company being complained about.

It is also morally wrong that companies can put consumers through the "on hold" hell -- there should be a legally enforceable time limit on how long one must hold before being answered, a limit on how long one can be made to wait, and an overall limit on how long one can be on the line before speaking to someone who can resolve the issue. These limits should be enforced by fines.

Millions of hours are spent monthly, if not weekly, by customers (both business customers and private consumers) trying to speak to company customer service departments. Effectively, they are financing companies' customer service centres with their own time. The impact on the economy must be a gigantic waste of productivity.

This expense and delay act as powerful disincentives to making any complaint, and that is probably deliberate. Companies use telephone customer service as shields to hide behind against complaints.

It is also possible to wait for a long time, finally get through, and then be cut off "accidentally" by the customer service agent, which is totally infuriating. O2 did this to me recently.

I believe it should be an offence subject to statutory fine to make complainants hold on to a customer services line for longer than a short time, say 3 minutes max, and an additional offence to cut off people who have been holding on before they have resolved their complaint in one phone call.

Companies should also be required by law to record all phone calls coming in to or going out from customer service departments, and to begin every call by giving the customer a unique reference number which identifies the recording. It should be the customer's right to be provided with a good copy of that recording within no more than one week.

It should also be compulsory for companies to train all customer service staff in the basic art of repeating key information back to the customer as it is being given, for instance repeating email addresses, phone and account numbers as they are said, to make it impossible for the customer to be made victim to errors in data collection.

If these measures were put in place and enforced, I strongly believe that companies would for the first time have a very strong incentive to get things right first time and to look after their customers properly. The UK economy would receive an enormous boost in productive time. And people would no longer have to endure experiences from hell to get their consumer rights, nor pay for that hell.

Anyone agree?

Thanks,

Noel