These are troubling times for big business. Traders, fighting for survival, need to focus on money. They absolutely do not have the time and resources to hand-hold unreasonable customers who insist on receiving goods and services in return for their outlay.
What these customers don’t realise is that companies have already lavished lucre on their wellbeing. They invest in moving mission statements so we know our payments are supporting social justice. They sink turnover into alluring marketing campaigns to win loyalty. When we stump up, they would reward us with the wares – if global forces didn’t conspire against them. Your faulty new car can’t be fixed? That’ll be because of the war in Ukraine. A refund can’t be processed? Blame the pandemic.
My postbag bulges with the ire of readers who would like a functioning phone line for their money, who carp about paying heating bills for a property they’ve never heard of, who whinge when sold a family holiday that doesn’t exist.
Every year, I seek to redress the balance by celebrating companies who go the extra mile … to inflate the balance sheets and embody the free (for all) market. Roll the drums for the 2023 Awards for Incomparable Customer Service.
Exemplary corporate logic
And the winner is … Barclays (mission statement: “Building a stronger and more inclusive economy that’s better for everyone”).
The deceased can’t argue, so if a customer persists, kill them off. This absolved the bank from engaging with a 91-year-old widow who wanted to remove her late husband’s name from their joint account. Her account was frozen, payments were stopped, phone line and energy supply cut off, and, when she took two buses to the nearest surviving branch to remonstrate, she was told she was dead.
The mighty backbone award
When customers complain, do what it takes and hold your nerve. The tenacity of Santander (mission statement: “Simple, personal and fair in everything we do”) deserves recognition. When a bedbound stroke patient wanted to make an online payment, it tried to insist that he visit his nearest surviving branch on a stretcher, conveyed by a private ambulance, for security checks.
HMRC (mission statement: “We understand our customers and their needs”) fined a widow £610 for failing to file a tax return for her dead husband when the required form did not reach her, online services were inaccessible for deceased taxpayers and its helpline failed to help.
But the winner has to be the housing association L&Q (mission statement: “To combine our social purpose and commercial drive to create homes and neighbourhoods everyone can be proud of”). When a terminally ill tenant and her daughter got unhappy after a year of leaks were ignored and their ceiling fell in, it shunted them round six unsuitable hotels and flats for 15 months while failing to address the repairs. The tenant died after the sixth move, whereupon her daughter received an eviction notice.
View image in fullscreenE.ON’s performance this year has deserved a category of its own. Photograph: Mark Richardson/Alamy
Most cunning stalling tactics
Transport for London (mission statement: “To make life in the city better”) tried valiantly for this gong.
This year it trumpeted a multimillion-pound scheme to encourage drivers to replace polluting vehicles and avoid the £12.50-a-day Ulez charge. In case too many applicants emptied the coffers, it devised ingenious impediments. Drivers with paper licences were rejected because the website neglects to warn that they are not accepted as ID. Married women who have changed their names were rejected because the application form does not allow a marriage certificate to be uploaded.
When all else failed, owners were told their valid passport, bank statement, insurance certificate had expired and applications were dismissed without appeal.
But the crown goes to Amazon (mission statement: “To be Earth’s most customer-centric company”), which has devised a failsafe obstacle course for deflecting empty-handed customers.
When parcels arrive empty, or not at all, or when a root vegetable has been substituted for a smartphone, Amazon refuses a refund unless they submit a police report, which it then has to verify by phone. The pièce de resistance is to declare that it has been unable to get through, and close the case.
Most austerity-proof wheeze
How do you ensure customers don’t patronise cheaper rival firms? HP has found the answer and calls it “dynamic security”. Firmware updates on its smart printers smuggle in a restriction, unbeknownst to users, which mean older, or other-brand, cartridges, will no longer work. So profitable is the ploy, HP has continued to expand it, despite paying $1.5m to US customers who launched a lawsuit.
But Transport for London wins for sheer chutzpah. It slapped EU drivers with fines of up to £25,000 for breaching Ulez after classing their emissions-compliant cars as heavy goods vehicles, then refusing to cancel them (until a nudge from me).
Prize for thrift
It’s vexing when 18 escaped water buffaloes tumble into your Essex swimming pool, and an outrage when you’re expected to foot the £25,000 repair bill. So NFU Mutual (mission statement: “Trust, respect and personal service”) did what any self-respecting insurer would do. It ignored the expert quotes it had itself obtained and, after 10 months of reflection, offered a diminutive settlement sum of its own devising.
Special award for … outstanding outreach
I’ve invented this prize just for E.ON (mission statement: “Creating a better tomorrow”). It forced a mother and daughter out of their new social housing flat by deducting their prepayment meter top-ups to settle the debt of a previous tenant. It unleashed debt collectors on a tenant with special needs over a bill owed by a stranger. It hounded a hospice patient on his deathbed while refusing to allow his sister to settle his final bill. And a sick elderly widower stopped heating his home and cooking food when threatened with legal action over a £13,000 bill that belonged to someone else.
