Goddamn stupid companies
Been having a lot of trouble with Bulldog. When we moved into our apartment, in November, we discovered that the previous tenants had signed up for this service. When we dial 150, which should bring us through to BT so that we can get our account set up, it goes straight to Bulldog's customer service instead. Note that these are the very unhelpful, agressive, rude, unpleasant, and unintelligible sort of customer service people. Most of them barely speak English. By December, we had managed to establish that in order to cancel the service (which of course the previous tenants hadn't done), we would have to send them a copy of our tenancy agreement to an address which they provided. We did this. We waited a while. In early January I called them back. To my surprise and delight, the man who answered was very pleasant, and told me that the line would be released on Monday or Tuesday of the following week (this being Thursday). We waited some more. No joy; the calls continued to go through to Bulldog without fail. About 2 weeks later, we called back. According to the next person who answered, they had never recieved our documents at all. When we expressed our annoyance and disappointment, the person at the other end became abusive, and we gave up on the call. Later on, I called back, and managed to get a fax number to which I could send the tenancy agreement. So, I sent it to the number they gave me, with a covering letter saying that this was the second time that I had sent it, and that I would appreciate if they would deal with it quickly. And waited some more. Finally, last night I called back again. I was told that they hadn't recieved the fax. Furthermore, I was told that "thousands of faxes come in to that machine every day", and it was implied that I was being unreasonable to think that someone would have received it. Needless to say, I wasn't terribly happy about that. Then came the real kicker - he told me that someone had rung the previous tenants last Friday to ask them to cancel the account... and they had refused!! I got out of him that the previous tenants had, in fact, asked for the service to be cancelled in November, i.e. just before we moved in, but "it wasn't done properly". I asked him what would need to be done to cancel it "properly". He didn't seem to understand and repeated that they hadn't done it properly. I tried asking the question again. Same answer. (Bear in mind that he had a very strong accent and horrendous grammar - trying to communicate at all was like trying to catch custard in a net) After trying a couple more times to get the information from him, he started shouting at me "Why you keep asking the same thing??" At this stage I wasn't very surprised, it seems to be company policy to answer awkward questions with meaningless information, and get aggressive if that doesn't stop you asking. I'd encountered the same technique a couple of times before with other customer service people at this company. By this stage we were both getting desperate, but he finally volunteered the reference number of the case (which every other person there I'd spoken to had refused to give me) and told me to send the fax again.
Incidentally, the oven broke down around the same time, so we had to call the landlady and arrange for an electrician to be sent out. We also then mentioned about the previous tenants 'refusing to cancel properly' and she said she'd get on to them about it.
And now we wait some more.
Incidentally, the oven broke down around the same time, so we had to call the landlady and arrange for an electrician to be sent out. We also then mentioned about the previous tenants 'refusing to cancel properly' and she said she'd get on to them about it.
And now we wait some more.