Has anyone else noticed that nothing seems to work and that contacting a real person to sort anything out is nigh-on impossible? It feels like it felt in the 1970s all over again: the music was good but getting anything done was an uphill struggle. Back then there was no internet, no mobile phones, no computers, but leaps in technology since then have created a whole new problem. Tech is the shield behind which those that do not like customer service hide behind.
Organisations told us that pushing work onto the consumer via the web would reduce consumer costs. And now the consumer is doing all the work and the provider has pocketed the savings. Similar situations in the 1970s, 80s and 90s saw organisations like the Consumers Association and local regulators exercising themselves to redress the balance, but now ineffectual quangos masquerade as regulators as they fail consumers.
Once again monolithic organisations in the private and public sector are taking their business and personal customers for a ride, gumming up the economy and making everyone poorer and a good deal more stressed.
By contrast, family business are in it for the long-term and care what their customers think. They too suffer from the autonomic face of giant bureaucracy.
I have recently been reminded of the utter failure of things having just undertaken a house move, itself ranking high in the stress league table.
Put aside the overrunning building works at our new property or that the removal firm storing our worldly possessions went bust, it was the transfer of broadband that took the biscuit. Has anyone else had a problem with Openreach?
I remember when I set up my science-tech business it took six months to get connection and we operated off a dongle – no wonder economic growth is flatlining!
How many businesses and consumers have suffered an eight-week delay in transferring broadband five doors up the road? How many must have had an engineer with no idea where his fibre was in the road because the plans were wrong? When ours finally found the correct lamp post, he couldn’t access it so asked if I had a key – to a lamp post! He then left.
The next engineer essentially advised me that I was as stupid as the previous engineer – until he found the same problems. He also went away.
The final engineer achieved his goal. Throughout, BT were incredulous and Openreach impossible to contact. And what of the alternatives?
Have you ever tried to speak to Sky? The research abilities of a nuclear scientist would be tested in finding the number.
Three layers of transfers to new people with attempted upselling are the reward. In any event Sky would use Openreach fibre. In the meantime, trying to call BT to complain is practically impossible because the EE connectivity is so poor, in the middle of a large town.
This experience can be translated to many service providers who have a monopoly or dominant position. There is no City Fibre or Virgin in my road – only Openreach.
The failure here is replicated across many public institutions and private monopolistic organisations. You know who they are. Utilities like water, power, soon to be railways, the NHS etc.
The problems are exacerbated by ludicrous GDPR rules and anti-money laundering schemes – the classic hammer to crack a nut.
They do not work. The regulators are apparently either captured, complicit or simply don’t give a s***. After all, what is the alternative?
What we need is a bonfire of the quangos replaced by deregulation and real competition with severe penalties for monopolistic behaviour.
There should also be more incentives to family businesses to soldier on despite the enormous burden of the anti-family state. The ghost of Stalin roams the corridors of Downing St.
John Longworth is an entrepreneur, businessman and a former MEP
