Broadband/internet fault compensation

[Peter McCoy]

As I sit here in work, I'm wondering what other internet users such as your good selves expect when it comes to faults with your internet service, specifically when it comes to compensation.

Personally, I never bother asking for compensation when my broadband services are affected. But this is largely due to it only costing me £1.50 a month on my staff package. This will change once they fuck me off but for now, I'm not concerned about it. But for others, price is an issue. Especially when they experience faults that recur or carry on for days at a time. So when compensation is sought, what would you guys expect to be offered? Feel free to elaborate on any reasons as I'm interested to see why people's expectations are high or low.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I've never had my internet go out for days at a time. Usually it's only a few hours, and even that is rare.

Have it be SLOW, yeah. But asking for compensation would never cross my mind unless I'd experienced an outage for more than a few hours. If it was days I would ask for money off my bill for sure.

[Morgan Evanar]

If it's just for a few hours, whatever, shit happens. But if it's more than a day and there is no natural disaster, I will call for some sort of compensation.

I am paying for the business package, though.

[Hobgoblin]

Most of the time, the ISP prefers to offer credit against future billing equal to the length of the outage because it's easier and cheaper for them. They don't usually offer additional compensation unless there's an extended outage or unless the loss of service directly affects the income of a business that relies on the service. When that happens, they'll still prefer to offer service credit, but you can frequently wrangle a little more out of them.

Granted this is in the US and I'm not sure how different it is in the UK. I'd imagine it's similar though.

[Dasquian Belargic]

Until I started working in customer service, I wouldn't have expected anything except them hopefully restoring the service within a couple of hours / a day maximum - but now I would probably push for some kind of credit on the account towards the next bill.

The service is kind of slow all the time though and that's just something I have come to expect/accept.

[Atreyu]

I've never had my internet drop out for more than a couple of hours, and on all occasions it's been the result of my own phone line playing up and not the ISP. Needless to say I've never expected compensation.

[Morgan Evanar]

Right now I have dual internet connections with auto-failover on different providers. If they both go down something has gone very wrong.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

I've never had real problems, and the only time I can remember when our net was out was when the April 27 storms rampaged through and the net was out for a week due to an external issue. Got credit for that outage of course.

[Peter McCoy]

Perhaps it's a British thing where we believe people owe us big time for fuck all. With all the claims advertising and solicitors working to get compensation for accidents and stuff, it's no surprise that consumers are looking to get more than they really should.

The average broadband package in the UK costs anywhere between £15 to £30 per month. The majority of customers I speak to daily pay around £20 for their broadband service monthly. If the internet is off for one day, that equates to roughly 66p per day. Yet when the service is off for just a few hours it's common for customers to demand 10's of pounds off their bill.

Just the other day a guy asked for £30 compensation for a days loss of service. When I told him his broadband costs just 66p and there's no way I could justify a £30 credit for a single day's loss he was flabbergasted. I offered him £5 just to shut him up but he still wasn't happy and demanded to speak to my supervisor. My supervisor then offered him the original 66p maximum and he said "Well what about the £5 Peter offered!?" to which my supervisor said "Oh no, that's too much and I disagree with Peter's judgement of the situation."

Quite often customers mention the costs they will incur as a result of their internet loss, such as working from home, having items on Ebay etc. They're never happy when I refer them to the terms and conditions stating they're not authorised to use their connections for business purposes of any kind. I always feel like a prick for mentioning the T's and C's but when customers don't take the hint it's often the only way to get them off your back about an issue that is completely out of your hands.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

Naw, there are people here in the states who are the same way.

[Dasquian Belargic]

We have a big entitlement culture that is tied into the welfare state.

Equally, there are plenty of well-off people who don't understand that sometimes issues are out of your hands. Currently, the government has told us to stop a particular part of our job which is having big financial implications for our customers, but we have literally no control over it. So we apologise, of course, but they want to know if we are going to reimburse them for it - which of course we aren't. Take your complaint up with the Treasury and see if they'll refund you.

[Captain Untouchable]

Since no one else has played devil's advocate yet - I think it's worth pointing out that, as far as much of the country is concerned Peter, you work for Satan. Virgin Media - and ISPs in general - have turned public opinion against themselves with their "intentionally misleading" advertising, their "up to X MB" packages, and what-not.

From the perspective of the person calling you, the lack of service isn't the only thing that Virgin has done wrong. Their claim for compensation (in their head) isn't just about that one incident: it's their reward for being patient about you "lying" about how much Broadband they'll get. I'm not trying to exonerate anyone for their poor manners and bad behaviour - but from their perspective, you're the bad guy in the exchange.

The sad truth is that when you work for Virgin Media, Coca-Cola, or Her Majesty's Government, you leave your individuality at the door: people will talk to you as if you are an avatar for the company. And I bet pretty much everyone else has done the same at one time or another - whether it's complaining about call centres in India, people who phone on behalf of charities, blaming the MET office for the fact that it's raining, or holding me personally responsible for the fact that Vanilla Coke isn't sold in the UK anymore.

I don't think it's to do with the welfare state - I think it's something more fundemental than that. In ye olden days, humans would blame a deity for the weather, because personifying that abstract concept was the only way they could wrap their head around it. Modern humans do the same thing, but with social groups and companies: we don't think of foreign countries as millions of individuals for example, we think of them as "America", and ascribe stereotypes accordingly.

Congratulations Peter - I think that means you're an Angel of the Lord Branston. :uhoh

[Dasquian Belargic]

The only time that I wouldn't speak to a customer service rep in a way that I'd like to be spoken to myself is when that particular member of staff has been incompetent. If the problem I'm experiencing is directly because they personally have failed to do their job in some way then yeah I would be frustrated.

With our customers, its a 70/30 divide between people who acknowledge that we are mouthpieces of the government and therefore limited in what we can do, and people who think that we are actively going out of our way (personally) to deny them help. I hear some variation on the phrases "I bet I would get more help if I was an immigrant!" and "I worked hard all my life, paid my taxes and now you're telling me [something]" at least two or three times a day.

[Cor Leonis]

How does the caller know you aren't incompetent? A lot of call centres are staffed by people reading a set script off a screen, or running through a check list; and there could be some loophole that you're "technically not supposed to tell anyone about", but that you might clue them in on - Mr Incredible style - if they start making a ruccus. Would they be justified in being not-so-polite then, just as you might be if you thought a customer service rep was being incompetent with you?

Like I said, just playing devil's advocate. Having been on both sides of the charity fundraising fence, I know that things aren't nearly as clear-cut as I thought they were before I started. A lot of the people I dealt with (and I'm guessing you deal with them two) were from a generation or two ago, and had a little trouble accepting the fact that things don't work the same nowadays as they did when they were "your age".

I've been verbally attacked down the phone enough times to last a Time Lord's worth of lifetimes - one guy even told me that he hoped I was as ashamed of myself for having become a worthless call centre lowlife, because my parents certainly must be. Someone also suggested that we fit guns to the Snow Leopards so that they can fight back against the poachers... that was pretty awesome. :lol

Personally, I'm too shy on the phone to kick up a fuss. I don't like how my voice sounds when it's recorded, so answer phones freak me out, as does the "all calls are recorded and monitored" thing. ^_^; I do always put in the effort to be extra-friendly when I can though, just because I remember how much it improved my day when I charity-called a peppy person, even if they didn't donate anything.

[Peter McCoy]

How does the caller know you aren't incompetent? A lot of call centres are staffed by people reading a set script off a screen, or running through a check list...

That's not a very fair thing to say. I don't have a script or a checklist but I know people that do and they are very intelligent people who know their shit, but they HAVE to follow said script/checklist because it's their job and that's what they get paid for. If they deviate from the script they get disciplinary action. Don't forget that call centre workers are there first and foremost to get paid, not to help customers. They do what they have to do to earn their wage, whatever that may be, including follow a script.

As I said I have no script or set way to do my job, I take the action I feel necessary given the situation and in the order I feel most logical. But friends who work in TV faults have to follow an on-screen flow. They have to complete the flow which tells them what questions to ask the customer and they select the appropriate option based on the customers answer which then causes the flow to ive the next question/test to perform.

I trialed a similar system for broadband faults and thanks to my feedback it was canned as being inefficient since you cannot apply a pre-determined flow to broadband faults since there's just too many variables to account for. These flows assume there's just one fault but whiule fixing it another could occur or an error on the PC could pop up and you have to deal with it before continuing but these automated flows cannot account for such an event. The employer wants to de-skill the job as much as possible so they can pay the workers less. This has nothing to do with how technically capable the employee actually is - they have to do the job the way the person holding the purse strings wants it done.