The increasing incompetence of companies

It took me a week of calling GoGirl to get my son added to the car insurance. I called every day for an hour before having to give up and get on a work call instead.

I only called because I tried their online system to make the change but it wouldn't take his details. Despite asking me for a start date on the policy change it wouldn't take his date of birth because he wasn't 17yrs that day (but would have been on the date the policy change was effective).

So their online portal didn't work and they don't pick up their phones.

A complete shower.
 
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Just before sorting out mortgage my car insurance was up for renewal, ended up switching to a different company. Before putting it through, I carefully checked if they did any credit checks because any hard searches could have had implications on the mortgage. Their website says 'we will perform an identity check which is only visible to you and Experian and not any other lender'. Lovely, so I took out the policy, paying monthly.

I get an email notification that a hard search (full credit application) has been done via TransUnion by this company. I've always paid monthly for my car insurance and NEVER in 16 years has any other company done a hard search or recorded payments via a credit reference agency. Phoned them up and asked them what was going on and the guy said 'we don't do hard credit checks, only soft ones for identity etc'. Told them that they'd done one and he said this was impossible. Escalated it and promised a callback from the manager which of course never happened.

After 3 days of waiting on calls, I eventually spoke to a manager who told me that there's no way this happened and I need to email proof in, which I did. He raised a formal complaint also. I get a response from the complaints team quoting their privacy policy about only doing the soft checks that I've already been told about and I've read myself, they completely ignored the proof I gave them.

I responded by telling them to actually look at the evidence provided and they said they can't do that but they'll escalate it to their customer relations team and that I'd need to wait 8 weeks for a response, by which time my policy would be well underway so I couldn't then cancel it because of this farce.

Why can nobody actually read and deal with things properly?! I ended up raising a dispute with TransUnion which was successful thank god so it's gone and it also didn't cause any issues with the mortgage but the **** poor customer service really rattled me.
 
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el_dazza said:
Just before sorting out mortgage my car insurance was up for renewal, ended up switching to a different company. Before putting it through, I carefully checked if they did any credit checks because any hard searches could have had implications on the mortgage. Their website says 'we will perform an identity check which is only visible to you and Experian and not any other lender'. Lovely, so I took out the policy, paying monthly.

I get an email notification that a hard search (full credit application) has been done via TransUnion by this company. I've always paid monthly for my car insurance and NEVER in 16 years has any other company done a hard search or recorded payments via a credit reference agency. Phoned them up and asked them what was going on and the guy said 'we don't do hard credit checks, only soft ones for identity etc'. Told them that they'd done one and he said this was impossible. Escalated it and promised a callback from the manager which of course never happened.

After 3 days of waiting on calls, I eventually spoke to a manager who told me that there's no way this happened and I need to email proof in, which I did. He raised a formal complaint also. I get a response from the complaints team quoting their privacy policy about only doing the soft checks that I've already been told about and I've read myself, they completely ignored the proof I gave them.

I responded by telling them to actually look at the evidence provided and they said they can't do that but they'll escalate it to their customer relations team and that I'd need to wait 8 weeks for a response, by which time my policy would be well underway so I couldn't then cancel it because of this farce.

Why can nobody actually read and deal with things properly?! I ended up raising a dispute with TransUnion which was successful thank god so it's gone and it also didn't cause any issues with the mortgage but the **** poor customer service really rattled me.
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I don't know the ins and outs of it but the way finance works these days the insurer is probably entirely leaving it in the hands of another company who are repackaging a service from yet another company, who are only taking on part of the liability themselves and might have a "value added" 3rd party involved such as Ting who might be playing to different rules themselves.

b0rn2sk8 said:
Genuine question - why do you pay for your car insurance monthly? It’s normally at least 10% more expensive.
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For me personally it makes it so I can be much more hands off with my finances, even if it costs a little more, if the bulk of regular payments are a smoothed monthly flow, I begrudge any time I have to think about let alone manage money.
 
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Great one today.

Used the Dartford Crossing on Sunday, with everything going on at home I completely forgot to pay the charge until this morning - fair enough, my bad, entirely my fault.

Log in to the system to see if there's the off chance I can still get away with making the payment.
Enter my reg. no., system finds the car and shows 2 outstanding crossings - excellent, maybe it's OK.
I follow through the process, explicitly say "No" to an option which asks if I want to add any credit for additional crossings, and pay the outstanding £5. Job done.

Except it's not. I don't get any email receipt, so I sign back in using the payment reference to check if it's gone through OK, and "Available credit: £5, no crossings have been allocated to this payment"

wtf :confused:

I've since called them multiple times and I'm getting a completely different answer every single time, everything from "it has been allocated to the crossings and here's a different payment reference" to "there are 2x £70 PCNs on the way and there is no way to get a refund at all"

How difficult is it to get a straight answer?! Needless to say I'm a bit a) ****** off (partially at myself) and b) stressed about the ~£250 bill potentially on the way for making the payment less than 36 hrs late (lease car, so probably a £50 admin charge for each PCN as well).

Yes, completely my fault for not paying on time, but what a joke of a response :mad:
 
Haggisman said:
Great one today.

Used the Dartford Crossing on Sunday, with everything going on at home I completely forgot to pay the charge until this morning - fair enough, my bad, entirely my fault.

Log in to the system to see if there's the off chance I can still get away with making the payment.
Enter my reg. no., system finds the car and shows 2 outstanding crossings - excellent, maybe it's OK.
I follow through the process, explicitly say "No" to an option which asks if I want to add any credit for additional crossings, and pay the outstanding £5. Job done.

Except it's not. I don't get any email receipt, so I sign back in using the payment reference to check if it's gone through OK, and "Available credit: £5, no crossings have been allocated to this payment"

wtf :confused:

I've since called them multiple times and I'm getting a completely different answer every single time, everything from "it has been allocated to the crossings and here's a different payment reference" to "there are 2x £70 PCNs on the way and there is no way to get a refund at all"

How difficult is it to get a straight answer?! Needless to say I'm a bit a) ****** off (partially at myself) and b) stressed about the ~£250 bill potentially on the way for making the payment less than 36 hrs late (lease car, so probably a £50 admin charge for each PCN as well).

Yes, completely my fault for not paying on time, but what a joke of a response :mad:
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Sounds like grounds for reasonable dispute if you have evidence of payment and calls to them. If you have family health problems that should add to the dispute, i'm guessing with this point however. The fine should be allocated to you, the driver, not the lease company, but it's been a long time since i read up on this. The fine is half the amount if paid within 14 days also, but disputing the fine may remove the "offer" of half payment.

Purely bullying tactics, and last time i used the bridge it was manned years ago.
 
Let it go to court, present your evidence that you've acted in good faith and with the best of intentions. I doubt any judge would rule against the very reasonable actions you've taken.


On a more anecdotal tip, I've given up trying to fight companies now and adopt a similar stance to the above. It's a waste of time, effort and energy trying to battle on. Most companies have next to no staff, inadequate or just downright broken automated systems and terrible response times.


If you know your rights, know you're right and have the evidence to back it up I say life is too short to hang on the phone or deal with cretins who don't give a damn about you or your problem.
 
These days i do my best to avoid spending money on whatever i can. I research the hell out of every little thing, question if i'll completely use its worth, and by this point if i'm convinced it's okay to proceed there's a chance i've had enough of trying to justify the purchase and never do.

Crossing a bridge obviously doesn't fit in with the above, but i'm reminded each time i come in here of a post on reddit with hundreds of thumbs up sharing my above thought process. People are starting to realise life is too short to care about materialism.
 
The_Arbiter said:
These days i do my best to avoid spending money on whatever i can. I research the hell out of every little thing, question if i'll completely use its worth, and by this point if i'm convinced it's okay to proceed there's a chance i've had enough of trying to justify the purchase and never do.

Crossing a bridge obviously doesn't fit in with the above, but i'm reminded each time i come in here of a post on reddit with hundreds of thumbs up sharing my above thought process. People are starting to realise life is too short to care about materialism.
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This.Most of the stuff I've bought has ended up being a badly designed/made piece of **** anyway.
 
Hades said:
It took me a week of calling GoGirl to get my son added to the car insurance. I called every day for an hour before having to give up and get on a work call instead.

I only called because I tried their online system to make the change but it wouldn't take his details. Despite asking me for a start date on the policy change it wouldn't take his date of birth because he wasn't 17yrs that day (but would have been on the date the policy change was effective).

So their online portal didn't work and they don't pick up their phones.

A complete shower.
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My Daughter changed her car the other week and is with GoGirl... absolute PITA getting hold of them, she tried 4 times in the 30 min breaks she gets, and never got through.. they have such limited opening hours and such horrific wait times! And you can do bugger all online..

Mind you, did get through in the end, and they did help her last year when some (middle class, middle aged couple) hit her in a car park and tried to put in a fraudulent claim for previous damage to their car and they were quite cheap.. so... I guess you get what you pay for?
 
"we are experiencing a higher volume of calls than normal"

No, you're not, because your phone lines say that all of the time. You are therefore experience the normal volume of calls, and don't have enough staff.

Instead of giving your CEOs multiple millions, and enriching shareholders, hire more call centre staff.
 
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@Haggisman
The problem is that none your aforementioned companies is reputable anymore. They are all notorious in their customer services.

Most big companies are.

With respect to Oculus why isnt OCUK handling the warranty for you?

Also dealing with America based companies with no UK based centre is a royal pain. They will use their side of consumer rights on UK/EU citizens which they will claim you have no rights…

That’s why amazon became so successful over here.
 
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Jono8 said:
"we are experiencing a higher volume of calls than normal"

No, you're not, because your phone lines say that all of the time. You are therefore experience the normal volume of calls, and don't have enough staff.

Instead of giving your CEOs multiple millions, and enriching shareholders, hire more call centre staff.
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"Your call is important to us."

Gives up, goes on their website.

"We respect your privacy" cookie pop up.
 
The_Arbiter said:
Sounds like grounds for reasonable dispute if you have evidence of payment and calls to them. If you have family health problems that should add to the dispute, i'm guessing with this point however. The fine should be allocated to you, the driver, not the lease company, but it's been a long time since i read up on this. The fine is half the amount if paid within 14 days also, but disputing the fine may remove the "offer" of half payment.

Purely bullying tactics, and last time i used the bridge it was manned years ago.
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I'm not going to dispute it, I was fully in the wrong for not paying in time, as the timescale was clearly advertised on all the signs (although I do think 24 hours is unnecessarily short, e.g. the CAZ here in Birmingham gives you a week). My problem is more the completely wrong information on the online system, and the fact none of the call centre staff seem to have a clue
:mad:

The fine will go to the lease company as they are the registered keeper of the vehicle, so no luck there, even if I did dispute it, I'd still have to pay their admin fees :(
 
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Demon said:
My Daughter changed her car the other week and is with GoGirl... absolute PITA getting hold of them, she tried 4 times in the 30 min breaks she gets, and never got through.. they have such limited opening hours and such horrific wait times! And you can do bugger all online..

Mind you, did get through in the end, and they did help her last year when some (middle class, middle aged couple) hit her in a car park and tried to put in a fraudulent claim for previous damage to their car and they were quite cheap.. so... I guess you get what you pay for?
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I hate these insurance companies solely for female drivers. Besides most of these companies are so much more expensive than other quotes. Not just me but other friends.
 
Jono8 said:
"we are experiencing a higher volume of calls than normal"

No, you're not, because your phone lines say that all of the time. You are therefore experience the normal volume of calls, and don't have enough staff.

Instead of giving your CEOs multiple millions, and enriching shareholders, hire more call centre staff.
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Problem is with call centres the average age of the workers are 26 and have a high turnover of staff. As so strict with call management times, get no time to compose themselves if they had an absolute ******* who threaten them with killing their dog.

Then if you are in sales or retentions- don’t meet your targets, disciplinary. It’s not the employee’s’ fault if a customer doesn’t want to take up the offers as a new customer or to stop them leaving. As calls are random. The employee waited the longest for a call gets the first call. It’s pot luck.

Plus in one call centre I worked at- we were only allowed water and mints at our desks. They put someone in another department on disciplinary for having orange and lime TicTacs. FFS! How bloody petty!

Also another issue with most call centres, is the lack of training! Had three days training before I went ‘live’ and half the stuff I had no clue about! This doesn’t give much confidence for the customer. Then employees get annoyed and leave.

I have worked in 5 call centres over 6.5-7 years. Was made redundant twice, left another due to being falsely accused of something I didn’t do - I was abroad at the time. Providing evidence of being abroad made no difference. Another reason for leaving a job was splitting up with ex and moved back to my parents 110 miles away.
 
cheesefest said:
I hate these insurance companies solely for female drivers. Besides most of these companies are so much more expensive than other quotes. Not just me but other friends.
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In our case it was just the cheapest quote on compare the meerkat, not that it catered for females, but do agree companies pandering to things like this often are more expensive.. It is then of no surprise they ended up being one of the most expensive when she changed her car!
 
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Demon said:
In our case it was just the cheapest quote on compare the meerkat, not that it catered for females, but do agree companies pandering to things like this often are more expensive.. It is then of no surprise they ended up being one of the most expensive when she changed her car!
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For me my insurance is £200. The pink insurance companies were double
 
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