Prime Time Investigates Customer Service, tonight RTE1, 9.35
In a programme subtitled, Service with a Snarl, Conor Pope of the excellent Irish Times PriceWatch column is fronting tonights Prime Time Investigates.
In a warm-up article in Saturdays Irish Times, Conor looked at some examples of problematic customer service experienced by Irish consumers. On the basis of that article, it looks like NTL/Chorus/UPC might be bearing the brunt of the coverage.
Lets hope this programme doesn’t unexpectedly and quietly get pulled like the last episode of Buyer Beware last Thursday night.
6 Comments
This AOL customer care video beats the lot:
http://www.pauldervan.com/2008/11/i-would-not-believe-this-if-it-were-not.html
Hi Conor, enjoyed your programme tonight. I have been having a problem with a Motor Dealer who is a Member os S.I.M.I and I have found to my cost that even though S.I.M.I. advertise the illusion that one is somewhat assured of a better type of dealer, they are powerless to enforce any judgement they make in the customers favour against one of their members.
Please contact me for the full details and hopefully as you said tonight that when the Media get involved that you may be of assistance in highlighting this illusion.
Thank you Robert Murphy
I personally thought the programme was a nothing piece of television. They didn’t tell us anything that we don’t know, or didn’t experience already.
Shock horror, RTE and Conor Pope spend money to produce a program to tell us that NTL have shite customer service. Well, I never!!!
Totally agree with John O’Connor above – this was probably the worst Prime Time Investigates I’ve ever seen – what investigation did they do? Ask people to phone in with issues they’ve had? Also the three or so issues with NTL at the start were clearly trying to push an agenda about that organisation – which in my opinion is below the usual standard for Investigates (even the Traveller program was fair and unbiased). The only thing that was revealing in any degree was the Jackie Skelly piece, but again as John O’Connor said above, nothing we didn’t know before. The worst of all is that I could have filled that program myself with far more severe customer services issues that I’ve either experienced personally or those experienced by my friends and family.
Oh and why bother spend the entire budget on those ridiculous background customer service “angels” and the macbooks recycled from Gerry Ryan’s weight loss series from earlier in the year.
Well done for exposing the various companies on Primetime last night. It has been long overdue. I hope that as a result that things may improve. It is totally unacceptable the way in which these companies operate.
All, many thanks for your comments. I watched the programme myself last night and am in the middle of putting together my thoughts on it for the next couple of days.
@paul – thanks for the vid. Hadn’t seen that before. Worth a look if anyone hasn’t clicked on the link.
@Robert Murphy – this site isn’t actually linked to Conor, PriceWatch or RTE. You can reach Conor at pricewatch@irishtimes.com. Best of luck with the SIMI – they are a self regulating body which are never likely to take action against their own fee paying members. But I’ll come back to that at a later date.
@John O’Connor – thank you for your comments John, but given the domain of your computer where you made that comment from, would you like to confirm a conflict of interest to clarify your comments?
@Frank – some of your comment are items that sprung to mind for me watching the programme – which as I said I’ll come back to shortly. There didn’t really seem to be that much “investigates” going on.
With regards to Jackie Skelly, I did think that the subtle shift to expose dodgy sales tactics rather than dodgy customer support procedures was a little distracting and off topic.
Overall though, I thought the programme had some positive aspects that (more and more I’m becoming convinced) need to be brought to the attention of the general public. But, as I said, more detailed thoughts to follow.
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[...] the Irish Independent, on Boards.ie (here and here) and AskAboutMoney.com (here), and here on ValueIreland.com) was so underwhelming with the “Service with a Snarl” PrimeTime Investigates programme [...]
[...] the Irish Independent, on Boards.ie (here and here) and AskAboutMoney.com (here), and here on ValueIreland.com) was so underwhelming with the “Service with a Snarl” PrimeTime Investigates programme [...]