That’s all, folks!
Anna Tims
Thanks for all the questions. Some of them have given me a new perspective. And thanks to all of you for reading the column and helping to hold companies to account. I like to think that by calling out bad practice and saluting the good, we are helping to change things, even if progress seems imperceptible.
Key events
In praise of good customer service
Wasserfall says: Stena Line were extremely helpful when I booked a ferry trip “the wrong way round” and rebooked it the correct way whilst I was on the phone to them. They also moved (without charge) a ticket for a ferry when we were held up following a crash on the motorway and missed our scheduled sailing.
Onecandream says: I had to phone Premier Inn call centre to change a booking. The person I spoke to couldn’t have been more helpful.
Anna: Good news stories are balm to my blood pressure. Often readers are pole-axed by companies doing what they are legally required to do without quibble or delay. Sometimes a tiny gesture makes a disproportionate impact, as in your cases, because we all expect a battle. Praise in a newspaper is worth a dozen pricey adverts, while research by the Institute of Customer services has consistently found that investment in good customer services can increase company revenue.
It costs more to attract new customers that to retain loyal ones. And good customer service is not all about funding. It’s about allowing staff to use their initiative when circumstances break the mould. I’ll be forever grateful to the Premier Inn receptionist who bent the company rules and allowed my then 16-year-old son to check-in unaccompanied after a rail company left him stranded in a country station late at night. As an employee, she feared losing her job; as a mother she felt our pain.
Help! The company’s outside the UK
ellenrg asks: For three months I have been owed a refund and compensation by a train company based in the EU (European Sleeper) – totalling more than €200. This has been promised in writing multiple times but hasn’t been paid. Do I have any recourse to escalate this issue and who would I escalate to as a UK-based customer?
Anna: I’m sorry to hear this. Your simplest option is probably to make a claim for the fare via your card issuer, although this would only cover the fare, not any compensation. If you paid by credit card, Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act holds the card issuer jointly liable if you don’t get what you paid for and provided the goods or services cost between £100 and £30,000.
For debit card payments, you can try the voluntary chargeback scheme offered by Visa and Mastercard which covers transactions worth less than £100. You must claim within 120 days of the failed service – in your case the train journey that didn’t happen. As for the compensation you were promised, you could seek advice from the UK International Consumer Centre, a non-profit body operated by the Chartered Trading Standards Institute which can help with cross-border disputes.
Should airlines allow name changes on tickets?
sim6966 asks: I booked a flight with Wizz Air and when the confirmation email arrived I realised that a name was wrong. The autofill put my first name where my daughter´s should have been. I realised straight away and tried to change it only to find they charge 140 euros for this. I understand ticket reselling may occur without this but surely a period to check the booking and not incur a fee so high would be reasonable. It was a genuine mistake to which I reacted quickly.
Anna: It’s often said it’s cheaper to change your name by deed poll than to amend it on a flight booking. In fact, one passenger once did just that to save money. Many airlines, including Wizzair, will let you correct a typo or a nickname for free, but a full name change almost always incurs a fee or requires you to buy a new ticket. One reason, as you say, is reselling. If name changes were free, dealers could take advantage of a promotional offer to buy tickets in bulk then sell them on at a higher price and swap the booking name for the buyers’.
Then there are potential administrative costs as flight manifests are linked to national security databases and changes involve new checks. However, budget airlines charge notoriously high fees for extra services, be it name changes or hold luggage, because that’s their business model. Cheap fares lure custom but don’t make a profit; high fees plug the gap.
Does AI help or hinder good customer service?
Catupatree asks: Do you think AI is a help or a hindrance to people making complaints?
TLouis1990 asks: How are companies dealing with the liability of hallucinating AI? Have you seen any examples of good and bad practice that you would like to highlight?
Anna: AI crops up in passing in my inbox. It’s not usually the focus of a complaint, but just another obstacle that has prevented the customer getting redress. Chatbots can be useful for straightforward troubleshooting, but I’ve yet to hear of one addressing and resolving a complaint about specific service failings. What I have seen is endlessly repeated platitudes in stilted English which seem designed to keep disgruntled customers at bay.
I’ve yet to come across a case of hallucination, although human agents are as good as any robot at scrambling facts. A good company will use the technology to glean basic information from a customer before referring them to a human agent. However, there should always, always be another means of contact so that customers who struggle with technology are not excluded and to give a human ear to distressing situations.
What not to do when complaining?
TLouis1990 asks: What are your tips for getting the best out of customer service? Are there mistakes we all make that make issues worse?
Anna: I like your question; too often we focus on what customer service agents owe us rather than vice versa. Remain calm and polite is my top tip. That’s not always easy, especially when you feel you are being messed about, but it’s essential. Temper and rudeness is not only unfair on call centre staff, it can backfire on you. Companies may refuse to deal with abusive customers. Occasionally, when I’ve contacted a press office about a reader’s complaint, I’ve been so horrified by transcripts of their treatment of agents that I’ve dropped the case.
When you complain, include all relevant information such as booking references, your address, screenshots of relevant bills or letters to save to-ing and fro-ing. You basically want to ensure that they can identify you quickly on their system and that they have evidence of the problem. If you’re phoning, have all that information at your side. Make a note of who you spoke to and when in case you have to follow up. And be reasonable in terms of timescales and redress. Demands for £500 in compensation when you report a burned Deliveroo may stop you being taken seriously.
Any companies that do it right?
Somersetlass asks: Hi Anna. Thanks for all your work helping people deal with awful situations. With so many poor examples of customer service out there, are there any companies or organisations you’ve dealt with which use real people rather than AI and who actually listen?
Anna: Thank you for your thank you! If you mean companies I’ve dealt with professionally, there was a now defunct utilities company who offered a reader a spa day to help her recover from the stress its blunderings had caused her. Bagcraft, a luggage store in Essex is a stand-out. A customer had ordered two suitcases for a New Year’s holiday. One of them arrived from the manufacturer with a fault. The store owner reordered it and, worried that it would not reach the customer in time, set off the day after Boxing Day on a 820 mile round trip to deliver the cases in person.
Readers often write in to praise Le Creuset for its no-quibble lifetime guarantee which has resurrected the most ancient of steelware. And speaking as a customer, I was amazed when the online plant supplier Primrose informed me that part of my order was unavailable, sent a generous voucher unbidden as an apology and answered my subsequent questions about suitable alternative plants with prompt, personalised responses. And no, they didn’t know I was a journalist!
Does consumer protection need an overhaul?
estparva asks: Has the time come for a radical overhaul of consumer protection law and enforcement that puts the consumer in the driving seat? With easy low cost access to redress. Warning! It might make you redundant.
Anna: All these things already exist. The Consumer Rights Act 2015 combined various laws from various eras into a single framework which strengthens consumer protection. Regulators such as Ofgem and the CMA, are supposed to monitor customer service in their sector and enforce the law, council trading standards departments were set up to protect consumers from dodgy operators, ombudsman and dispute resolution schemes can step in when a customer can’t get a complaint resolved and county court offer an inexpensive legal route to redress.
The problem is funding and staffing. All these bodies are overstretched and, in some cases, underactive, but that’s not to say that they have contributed to important reforms along the way.
How do you cope with the inhumanity?
Janubian asks: How do you manage the emotions that letter writers’ situations must trigger – for example frustration, anger and sadness at the inhumanity of so many companies and their employees to those they are meant to serve?
Anna: That’s an interesting question. When I started writing consumer columns, I was fighting the good fight over faulty kettles or disappointing holidays. Over the last few years, it’s felt sometimes more like social work. It’s hard to maintain professional detachment when a nonagenarian is suffering in a decaying council flat or an energy company is stonewalling someone with terminal cancer.
The cases that haunt me at night are those who have just lost a child or a partner and are being tormented by a merciless multi-national. And there are cases that remain with me for years afterwards. It can be difficult not to let professional obligation tip over into personal investment. It would be inappropriate to keep in personal touch with those readers. But sometimes it’s hard not knowing how they are getting on.
How do you get a result without contacting a newspaper?
LorLala asks: Customer service has deteriorated massively over the years. You must have observed its near complete breakdown, businesses doing whatever they can to maximise profit, failing to care about customers at all, not being bothered about facts. How can an individual find a way through to achieve what you do without seeking advice from the national press?
ConradKnightSocks asks: What’s the best way to deal with a company if you’re unable to get a national newspaper involved?
Anna: Check if the company has published a complaints procedure on its website, then follow it. It should tell you the various stages of escalation if you’re not getting anywhere. Keep a timeline of interactions with the company, including the date and substance of phone calls. If you complain via webchat download a transcript to take screenshots and copy any letter you post. It’s important to have a paper trail to prove your efforts to resolve the problem.
Companies dislike a public shaming so a complaint on Twitter or Bluesky can sometimes galvanise inert corporate conscience. Take it to the top if need be. The website ceoemail.com publishes contact details of CEOs. If the firm is part of an ombudsman or alternative dispute resolution scheme, that is your next step once you’ve exhausted all other avenues. Then the small claims court is the last resort.
Are apologies every heartfelt?
davidabsalom asks: Have you ever had a company press department speak human to you, admit the fault without dressing it up in PR-speak and get the problem fixed promptly?
Anna: Problems are often fixed with remarkable speed – within hours on occasion – when I alert the press office, but I can’t recall a time when the official response was heartfelt. It’s not that the press officers themselves don’t feel the pain over the phone; it’s that they are forced to toe the corporate line in writing. And the rationale of the corporate line is usually: don’t admit liability in case they sue. That’s why “compensation” is almost always called “goodwill” and distress or hardship is renamed “inconvenience”. Or my greatest bugbear when a customer’s life has been blighted by service failings – “any inconvenience”.
How do we incentivise companies to invest in customer support?
JohnI asks: I worked for a company that has a reputation for poor customer service. It was frustrating even for me if I needed something doing because the outsourced call centre staff were pretty clueless. However, if you managed to get through to someone who actually worked for the company it was much better and they were knowledgeable and helpful. As customers, how do we incentivise companies to invest in good customer support? For example when shopping around don’t just go for the lowest price, take the quality of support into account as well.
Anna: You’ve answered your own question. Patronise the companies who go the extra mile. I always check out review websites and rankings by online consumer publications before committing. And I make sure that the company has published a complaints procedure on its website along with a proper address (not a PO Box), email and phone number. It’s a red flag if firms fend off customer contact by making themselves incommunicado.
You’re absolutely right that outsourced customer helplines have, arguably, made it harder to get problems fixed. The motive of the company is to cut costs. The experience of the customer is likely to be low-paid operatives who are disconnected from the core business, disempowered from taking personal initiative, and forced to stick to an official script.
How do companies get away with it?
Sherbert asks: How do the same companies keep getting away with such shocking levels of customer service and incompetence?
Anna: Many reasons. When I get disillusioned with corporate incompetence and indifference, I have to remember that my column exists to help with the worst cases. Most companies do what they are paid to do with greater or lesser efficiency. The average customer is unaware of the quality of a company’s customer service until they have to make a complaint. Our natural inertia is another reason. It’s a pain switching insurance/utilities/phone providers so many of us tend to put up with the devil we know.
There’s our addiction to convenience and bargains. Companies can always reel customers in with cheap-seeming prices. I’m guessing a minority of those customers check out reviews and consumer columns before signing up. Then there are those global companies such as online travel platforms that have made themselves so essential to us that we stick with them regardless of horror stories.
Anna is live
Anna is online now answering your questions.
Welcome to the conversation
Each week Anna Tims helps Guardian readers deal with consumer issues that can range from mildly annoying to utterly life-wrecking.
Anna will be joining us online at 3pm BST. Ask her anything about what she’s learned over the past few years, from the best and worst companies she’s dealt with, to the most unlikely and difficult issues she’s helped Guardian readers face.
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