One hears time and again that where firms fall down in their after-sales service is in telephone contact. Both June Small in the last edition of Consumer News and John Hollow, The Editor of Bromley and District Consumer Group's magazine, Watchdog, complain that it is not only the difficulty in contacting someone who could help them but also retaining that contact that is so frustrating. With the growth of call centres, one does not always speak to an employee of the company to which one wishes to complain or with which one wishes to sort out a problem. Does it seem to you that sometimes call centre and helpline staff have been instructed to be evasive so that as few real experts as can be got away with need to be employed? Having spoken to a very helpful female expert, only to be told later the same day that no females were employed, is a very definite turnoff, but perhaps not so bad as not being able to get through to the helpline for ages and then, when at last one succeeds, being cut-off half way through solving a problem. Is it that some firms do not put enough resources into their helplines? Perhaps persuading them to improve matters might be a very useful activity for Consumer Groups and eventually for NCF itself. Let us know if you have similar experiences.
I am inspired by the report about the new Mailbox Centre in Birmingham (see Group News) to get on the train and go and see it. It all seems strange to someone who knew Gas Street Canal Basin when there were still working boats about, with rotting and abandoned hulks and a canal full of rubbish and a towpath you would not like to walk along.
Plymouth Consumer Group sampled seven different tins of Chunky Chicken in White Sauce, see Members' News elsewhere for the outcome. However the tins, while being roughly the same weight, actually varied in a strange way. Three weighed 400g, two weighed 418g and two weighed 392g. Can anyone explain why this variation is found. Is it perhaps to make price comparisons more difficult?
John Hollow had problems with MESH computers, though when they were sorted out, he agrees that his is a superb machine. In contrast, his contacts with Evesham computers have been very satisfactory. Unlike most of us, he seems to know what goes on inside the box, and rebuilt his computer completely using the best of components from Evesham Micros. He was half-expecting compatibility problems as he simply chose the best components, hoping that they would work together. They almost' did, and Evesham were most helpful on the phone, always returned calls, made suggestions that worked, exchanged some components and even checked the machine out and altered some settings, all without charge. Rather unusual these days?
Gerry Lanchin, one of our Vice-Presidents, points out that at www.gisc.co.uk one can obtain a list of GISC members and the full code: It's certainly worth people checking that the more obscure insurance companies and intermediaries offering general insurance are members.
In the section of Group News dealing with the report of the visit to a supermarket by Tyneside Consumer Group (page 9), it was reported that supplies arrive from distribution centres in Doncaster and Milton Keynes, both quite a long way away. We have all seen the lorries rolling. We know from a group's visit to one of the distribution centres that many stores are supplied on a daily basis, sometimes with more than one delivery in a day, and that stocks at the retail outlets are based on this frequent delivery pattern. It makes one wonder what would happen if there was a sudden terrible blizzard in the Midlands which closed down all the motorways for several days?
Future Issues
Have you noticed that there has been some redesigning of (the printed) Consumer News? "More white space" seems to be the magic word, but the very nature of some of the articles makes this difficult to achieve. I can only describe some of our contributors as wordy, but I love every word, which makes editing them difficult. Please don't be put off from contributing because you will use up more white space. We will use it all up if necessary! Please send contributions, be it just a letter or a few notes from an interesting meeting, to an examination of insurance or banking practice, though I must say that a sixteen-page contribution, which I had the other day, was a bit surprising. Send them by the third week of February in writing, typed, on floppy disk, by e-mail or by fax, to John Brown, 6 Priory Gardens, Dartford, Kent DA1 2BE, Fax and phone 01322 280673 e-mail editor@ncf.info
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