Thinking of changing from Wanadoo/Orange to BT Broadband. Your thoughts please.

Regards,

Mags

Just completed a move from BT Broadband to SKY. Not sure about SKY yet but BT were hopeless when faults occurred and you go around the houses at their Asian based call centres.

Hi Mags

Thanks for your email. So I presume you want to change from Orange because they have asian call centres am I right? There are many broadband companies with UK based call centres including BT Broadband.

Having an asian call centre does not necessarily mean poor customer servivce. I would always look at the overall customer service history of a broadband provider (such as in our customer reviews) over where their call centre comes from.

Also some of the worst call centres are based in the UK, so service is not geographically linked.

If you want to play it safe then BT Broadband would make sense, the other alternative is to go small - most small ISP's don't need to outsource their phone support so they keep it fairly in-house with a few people.

People like Madasafish, Direct Save Telecom and Eclipse Internet have friendly staff who will respond to your needs in a timely and effective manner.

Cheers

Jason

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Jason Lloyd
moneysupermarket.com
0800 298 5770

" We're here to help you find the best deal and avoid the pitfalls through sharing knowledge and experiences."

I'm finding it very hard to talk to Orange about the problems I am having with their software and the new Windows Vista. Up until I bought the new PC (with Vista) I was very happy with them.

It doesn't matter where the person is that youa re talking to, nor does it matter what their nationality is, but it is important tha they know what they are doing / talking about and I am finding that Orange's representatives do not.

Cat

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"expert" Jason,

I'm sorry to have to correct you, but my understanding is that BT broadband also operate their technical support from an Asian call centre (unless I'm very much mistaken)

Jasildo

You're right actually my mistake, some parts of BT's support is in Asian Call Centres, but does that affect service?

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Jason Lloyd
moneysupermarket.com
0800 298 5770

" We're here to help you find the best deal and avoid the pitfalls through sharing knowledge and experiences."

Dear Jason

Enormously! It was like dealing with two different companies. UK was ok to absolutely wonderful. Offshore was similar to Talktalk.
Regards, Fedora

I must admit Fedora to feeling uncomfortable saying Asian call centres are worse than ours as it feels a little bit discriminatory towards their efforts. They do try very hard to please people as much as they can, I agree that they lack information and awareness of a customers situation, but I don't think they're not as good as UK call centre staff, just less informed.

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Jason Lloyd
moneysupermarket.com
0800 298 5770

" We're here to help you find the best deal and avoid the pitfalls through sharing knowledge and experiences."

I agree with Jason.

I know that the people I spoke to at Orange were extremely conscientious in trying to help me, but they simply did not have the correct training or knowledge to be able to do so.

Cat

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The staff not having the correct information or not being correctly trained is exectly what a bad call centre is which in turn is exactly what bad customer service is. It may well not be the fault of the individual on the phone but this forum is about whether or not the suppliers centre provides good service

Vodafone at Home has its call centre in Northern Ireland. Their accents can be impenetrable too sometimes, but they are certaiinly not cringingly polite

I don't understand why Jason Lloyd is uncomfortable talking about good or bad service. Isn't this a bit like saying I am uncomfortable about saying a building society with a rate of 5% on an online easy access account is not as good as a savings bank offering 5.6%?

On the contrary bigjim / time&tide I'm not uncomfortable talking about good or bad service at all, I agree fully that poor service can occur via a call centre operation, my principle argument is that poor service is not exclusive to foreign call centres.

For every example of a poor foreign call centre there is another of a very good one, similarly with the UK market there are bad call centres as much as there are good ones.

For example - Madasafish, Global and Waitrose - three of the highest rated broadband brands by the recent Watchdog survey and Which? for customer service, their customer care call centre operations are based in South Africa.

PIPEX - consistently the lowest rated provider for customer service on our customer reviews - their call centres are UK based.

From a practical perspective for broadband I agree that technical support queries need to have a UK base to conduct their checks, as most providers do, also most providers have a high level complaints dept which is UK based and for more general customer queries there could well be an offshore operation.

We can't really tell providers what to do in this respect but certainly if you want to vote with your feet and would prefer liaising with just a UK call centre there are plenty out there who could offer this to you.

I hope this helps?

Cheers

Jason

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Jason Lloyd
moneysupermarket.com
0800 298 5770

" We're here to help you find the best deal and avoid the pitfalls through sharing knowledge and experiences."

Hello Mr Lloyd
Fedora talks about BT UK being good and BT Offshore being similar to talktalk.
I am at a loss to understand why trying hard with unsufficent information and providing a poor service is acceptable.
What I find most interesting is the fact that there seem to be offshore call centres in all sorts of places including South Africa. Does anyone publish a survey explaining exactly which companies use which countries including a league table of competence for call centres within and without the UK?
Thank you

Sadly not time&tide I've just spent a while checking online to see if there is such as thing but alas to no avail.

Frustrating is not the word - besides I'm sure there are many providers who would not want their call centres examined either.

Cheers

Jason

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Jason Lloyd
moneysupermarket.com
0800 298 5770

" We're here to help you find the best deal and avoid the pitfalls through sharing knowledge and experiences."