You don't get nuffink these days unless you complain

[corkeye]

Recently I paid my student loan off (woooot) and was told that a letter would be sent to my employer to prevent more money being deducted out of my salary. This was a month ago, and I was assured that within 28 days the letter will be with my employer. Well obvs this letter didn't arrive, and my wage slip showed a load more money out of my account.

As you can imagine I was pretty annoyed and rang up the loan company. They apologised and blamed someone else (hmrc?) like they would do and assured me another letter was being sent out. I asked her for a refund, she said 'when the letter is sent, yada yada, could take 21 days'. At first I was going along with it, then it started to digest what she said. I said, 'nah i'm not having that, you said last time 1 month and now I have to wait 21 days, and it could actually be longer than that if the letter doesn't arrive. Put me through to your boss etc'

At this point i continue to carry on at her before she's had chance to answer me, not swearing or attacking her personally, but essentially making her feel pretty bad about the situation and making some decent points. She then goes, 'OK, email me yr wage slips and i'll pay it in myself TOMORROW.'

So i've gone from 3 weeks to 24 hours simply by kicking up a stink and asking to speak to her manager?

WTF? This has got me thinking. Is this what customer service is nowadays? Rip people off, give them piss poor service until they kick off then give them exactly what they want?

I started to think about other services, and then remembered how my mobile deal, virgin subscription etc has essentially been upgraded/improved after i've kicked off over something.

[Tal]

Believe it or not, some companies have a policy of not dealing with a complaint unless it's followed up. The reasoning is people either complained in the heat of the moment and don't feel as strongly a couple of weeks later or they lose faith and can't be bothered anymore.

I'm a great believer in giving feedback. It's not necessarily to complain but to provide data. If there's a problem, the company needs to know and will probably rely on customers telling it.

Sadly, as a nation, we're not very good at it!

I have plenty of complaint experiences too, like the OP and am a right pain in the posterior about it, if I'm sure I'm in the right!

[bobAlike]

There was used to be an Indian restuarant in the foodhall in the local shopping mall. It looked nice and seemed to be connected to a well known quality indian restaurant chain (name escapes me now). Anyway one day out shopping with my daughter we decided to give it a try. Over £20 spent on 2 mains, 2 soft drinks and a naan bread. When i dived into my chicken curry there was only 5 pieces of chicken each no bigger than a 1cm cubed. Of course I took it straight back and pointed the lack of meat to the waitress. What she told me next astounded me. "That's all we're allowed to serve unless the customers complain and then we can give them some more".

No surprise that it's not there any more. I just wonder how many people didn't complain.

[SubZERO]

wait you've paid your loan off? FML.. I'm still deeeeeeeeeeeeep in makeup with SLC

complaining gets you everywhere mate (unless its Jamies restaurant ldo), but as stated above as a nation we are fairly terrible at doing anything

on a slight derail, how annoying is it that HMRC store up your payments for the whole year earning interest on it, before sending it on to SLC at the end of the tax year in one lump sump, by which time you've racked up a lot more interest on your loan?