Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Big fees no service

A letter in Gulf News today highlighted a constant problem here that really needs some attention...not providing the service for which fees are charged.

No free service

The news item on redback spiders says the resident "called upon Emaar to carry out free pest control for residents". It then quotes Dubai Municipality as saying the residents of Springs are out of their range.
Let me explain something. Springs residents do not ask for free pest control. We pay a substantial service charge which includes regular pest control. On top of that, we pay housing fees (more like a tax) to the municipality. Still, we are out of their range.

From Mr H. Fared, Dubai


It's not just Emaar or the Municipality either is it, it's standard practice.

Of many that annoy me, Pay TV is a particular culprit - charge the fee but don't bother to produce a Programme Guide to tell subscribers what's on. (Why should we do that, we've got your money anyway). The box scrambles itself, technicians eventually arrive and bitch & complain that "we're not here to give this service."

Websites? A joke in this area. Anything up to literally years out of date, and no contact e-mail address given on most sites. If you send an e-mail to an address you happen to know the odds are very high that you'll never receive a response. I don't think they even read their e-mails.

Media ads that don't tell you where the advertiser is located, or the price of the product. A mobile number is all you get. They want you to give them your money but expect you to phone them find out how much and where you have to go to give it to them.

I could go on but I don't need to, you have your own examples.

It isn't just monopoly organisations either. It amazes me that even businesses with fierce competition display the same attitude. Is there a conspiracy, like a price-fixing ring? Secret get-togethers to agree that none of them will actually offer consumers a service?

There's a great business opportunity for one of them with the courage to break the code. A company that thinks about its potential repeat business, actually cares about its customers, gives them relevant up-to-date information and offers after sales service. What a novel idea.

2 comments:

nzm said...

Similar thing happened today at the office.

Our administrator rang the copier people to ask them why they hadn't been to service our copier when we had paid for service maintenance.

He got the runaround for about half an hour before demanding to talk to the manager.

He told a big fat lie that maintenance could only be done in our area on Saturdays - knowing full well that we're closed then.

So upon threat of sending the copier back to them and closing our account with them, someone is supposed to turn up tomorrow.

We'll see!

Seabee said...

Bookra inshaala...