Customer service. An oxymoron.

There was good news the other day, that the recently announced consumer arbitration courts will be up and running by the end of the year.

The plan is that instead of having to battle with the long-winded and prohibitively expensive legal system, consumers will be able to take their complaints directly to the new arbitration courts.

It's said that the judges will be specialists in the country's consumer protection law. The law covers the supplier’s responsibility to replace damaged goods and display prices clearly, and the consumer’s right to compensation for personal or financial damage.

Hopefully it will help to lift the game of suppliers here, but I'm afraid it will only help in the specific areas of shoddy goods and price cheating. I'm doubtful that it will help in a general sense to ease the frustration so many of us have in our dealings with companies.

The constant complaints about the lack of customer service delivered by our banks is an obvious one that I'm sure isn't covered.

I'm particularly irritated with Showtime TV at the moment, and again it's not something that appears to be covered by the consumer protection laws. It's just old-fashioned customer service that's lacking, a don't-give-a-damn attitude, complete disregard for the paying customers - much like the banks.

We buy one of the packages offered by Showtime which lists the channels included in the package. On a regular basis channels disappear and others appear, totally unrelated to each other. For example a news channel might disappear and a National Geographic channel appear.

There's no warning, no announcement, no information sent to paying customers. They simply do it.

Likewise the programme schedules are all over the place. Neither the information given by Showtime to the print media nor their own online programme guide can be relied upon to actually give the correct programmes or the correct times.

The attitude is summed up by the response of their telephone help (another oxymoron) service I called a while ago - I forget now exactly what my particular complaint was at that time. Anyway, after hearing my complaint the answer wasn't what they could do to solve my problem but was: "If you're not satisfied you can always cancel your subscription".

The corporate version of 'if you don't like it here you can always leave'.

Right now I can't even get the online programme schedule on the screen, I get an error message and the whole thing freezes. I have to switch off, switch back on and I can then get into the channels - but I can't get the programme schedule.

Will I call the 'help' line? I can't be bothered. They've achieved what I assume so many companies set out to achieve, make it so difficult, so frustrating that we just go away and stop annoying them with our complaints.

Research regularly shows that there's huge disatisfaction with the level of service provided by retailers and businesses here. There's much talk about how companies understanding customer service leading to customer loyalty will thrive while those which don't will struggle.

I see no evidence that things are improving, but maybe the new courts will at least help in one small area.


The report on the new courts is here.