I like getting new things, like, I expect, most people. So I’ve been looking forward for some time for the opportunity to upgrade my phone. (Apologies this has nothing to do with photography.)

I had a Sony Ericcson P1i in Summer ’07, which worked great for a while until it stopped sending texts. This got fixed, and then reappeared and stayed. For all of 2008, I’ve been back on my old K750i. Not the greatest phone on earth (and lately the 8 key has been playing up, so I can barely send xs. I mean, txts). So, I’ve been looking forward to the time comes that I can upgrade and get a better phone on a better contract. I even went into a Carphone Warehouse store in November to ask when this would be: December 15th, I was told. Yup, well over a year into an 18th month contract, I would be eligible for an upgrade.

The day comes and passes without much fanfare, and I naively wait for their phonecall. (You know the one – it comes at the wrong time for you, and you miss a million from them asking you if you want to upgrade before you finally have time to answer it.) It doesn’t come.

Today, however, I got a text saying “Dear JOSHUA, You are now due for a fantastic phone upgrade.”. (Awesome grammar there. Could someone tell them you don’t need a capital after a comma?) So I called them. What I’d been told in November must have been true: I was due an upgrade!

Apparently not. Read the rest of this entry »

I currently have a rant sitting in my drafts regarding the debacle that has been my morning. Not much of a debacle, just a phone company getting my hopes up and then dashing them against the jagged rocks of reality.

I tweeted about it earlier, and quite quickly received a reply from @carphoneware, who has offered to listen to my story and see what they can do about it. So, the draft is sitting firmly in my drafts until I’m finally ready either to publish or delete, depending on the outcome.

Having someone listening out for complaints online is all very well and good – in fact, I would more than encourage it, except that I don’t think it’s particularly scaleable. Yes, @carphoneware might solve a few customers’ problems, or @comcastcares or whoever. But that really only works when a vocal minority are using services like Twitter. If the audience rose dramatically, surely these company reps would be unable to engage in the kind of personal customer service they are currently doing (very well, by all accounts)?

As soon as the complaints rise to a volume loud enough to rival that of those reaching their call centres (proportionately – the same number of complaints directed to the person behind the @ as are coming through to the 0800 number), I would expect that the quality of the service will reduce to the same, basic impersonal level.

I am more than willing to be proven wrong. Consider this a challenge.