A Phonecall worth £60

I moved into my new house, and had to go through the ordeal of arranging a phone line with broadband.  Telecommunication companies have to be the worst public services I’ve ever faced – BT, Tiscali and Wanadoo have all raised my blood pressure on several occasions. (Check out some of these BT complaints)

Today I resigned myself to being passed around from call centre to call centre as they tried to sort out my issue – I had been charged £120 more than I expected in my latest phone bill for a very unspecific “one off charge”.  I swear blind I remember the BT engineer when I spoke to him had said I shouldn’t be charged at all for connection.

After explaining this three times to various call centre staff, my exasperation was rewarded with a £60 credit on my bill. The connection issue according to the final TSR had stopped being policy several months ago. Nice for them to tell me; my first warning of connection charge at all was the bill.  When I explained I had been passed around by four call centre staff before finally speaking to him, and “my mate in Truro worked for BT and said I’d get it for free” he gave me the discount to save me lodging a complaint.

Moral?  Always communicate with companies – remember they want your money but the staff are human beings.  I tried to not be a prick when talking to the call centre staff, and just firmly and calmly pointed out my grievances each time I spoke with a member of staff, lodging complaints as soon as my expected level of service wasn’t reached. 

Tags: BT, complaints, discount, budget tips

The power of “No”

Last month I spoke of going onto pay-as-you-go on my mobile to try and cut expenses, they offered me an £18 a month contract which despite hard work from the TSR at the call centre I said no to. Pleads included “This offer is only going until next week!”

Well today I was phoned up by another salesman from 3 (My mobile phone provider) asking for me – nowadays I always answer “Is this Robert Brown?” with “Who’s speaking?”, and I was about to launch into a murder scene interrogation…..

…but as I was lining it up with grunts and obscure mutterings (I doubt I could of pulled it off with the Tom Mabe style) the guy at 3 offered me £10 a month for life for 500 minutes anytime/any network. 

This works out over £300 a year less than what I was paying for up till this month, with 100 minutes more text/calls.

Just goes to show how desperate companies are to fix you into a contract – no doubt the iPhone is taking away a lot of business so they get me locked in for another 18 months, hell they even threw in a new phone (Nokia 6500 Slide), which I read a few reviews of and it breaks a lot, but I could always sell it on ebay.  I’m pretty happy today since I would have probably used about £10 a month in top-ups.

Anyway, a good lesson for me: never accept the first thing they offer you.  Just by saying “no” I’ve saved probably £100 a year.