Sometimes it can be hard to pinpoint exactly where you made a decision, or which exact straw broke the camel's back. Maybe if I hadn't had the experience that I've had today, I would have kept the previous one to myself out of a belief that I'd just been unlucky, but there comes a point where consistency throws any notions of luck out of the window.
Last summer, my 6 month old galaxy z fold4 suffered a well known manufacturer's defect (the ribbon cable in the hinge came loose from the socket, meaning the phone turned itself off when folded). I have ee's "full coverage" insurance, and figured that it wouldn't be too much of an issue to get a repair or replacement free of charge as this was not the result of user error; surely, even without insurance of any kind, it would still be well within warranty, right?
The next week of my life rapidly degenerated into a kafkaesque waking nightmare.
Nobody in the call centre seemed to know the first thing about their own company's policies. I was told by one person that I'd have to pay an eye-watering £700 excess, which I argued wasn't fair, and was told that my insurance wouldn't cover manufacturers defects anyway. I was then passed to some other department, where i was promptly passed back to the first department, only to be told (by another member of staff) that it could be done free of charge; unfortunately, this was the point that your systems went down, and I had to start over.
I spent a couple of days going around in circles like this, hearing all kinds of different numbers (£50 flat fee, £200 excess, free, £700). During this time, the systems kept "going down*," sometimes resulting in the call being disconnected on the spot, but on one particular occasion meaning that the phone couldn't be booked in but I'd recieve a call later on so that someone else could book it in on the agreed terms (£50, which I was extremely unhappy about but just wanted the nightmare to be over so I could do something more constructive with my time). During the call back, I was told in no uncertain terms that a £50 flat fee "wasn't something we offered" in these situations and the representative who spoke to me not only refused to help in the matter, but called me a liar in the process and spoke to me with the kind of disdain and disgust you'd usually reserve for mass shooters. At this point, it was almost 9pm, and your lines were closed. I went to bed angry and exhausted.
The next morning was more of the same. Eventually, after about 5 more calls and multiple hours, the phone was booked in for a replacement (with a £50 fee, which I was *still* angry about but just wanted it done). The handover process wasn't exactly great, and wasn't really explained properly beforehand (word of advice--in these situations, *use two couriers to allow customers time to transfer data across properly, or explain well in advance that it's a rapid handover at the door*). I wound up losing around $1500 worth of cryptocurrency that was in a metamask account I no longer have access to as I didn't write down the seed phrase.
I then recieved a letter with an envelope in it asking me to let you know when I would be sending the phone in, and telling me that if I didn't then I would be liable for the cost of the replacement, leading to more calls to ascertain what was going on and whether I was going to be smacked with a massive fine on top of the inconvenience of this whole "process".
The replacement itself was an unboxed refurbished model. I have absolutely nothing against properly refurbished phones, in fact I'm currently starting a refurbishment business, however there is a massive value difference between hardware that is factory firsts and hardware that has ever been refurbished, and any replacement within a contract should be like-for-like. That's not to mention that this replacement seems to not be grounded properly, as when it is plugged in you can feel the electricity when you touch the metal frame (and this is 100% electricity, as it is taking the green anodised coating off of the metal when it happens--basically an inverse electroplating process). Sending out poor quality refurbishments like the one I've been given isn't just bad for goodwill and customer retention, it can also be extremely dangerous; for example, if this particular phone had been sent to somebody with a pacemaker, they would be dead.
The only reason I haven't bothered going to ee about the fault with the replacement phone is that i feel it would be about as productive as banging my head into a brick wall.
Fast forward to today. As a part of setting up my new business, I need an additional phone number. Ideally, I needed this to be set up by 4pm today, as this would have meant my business cards and advertising that prominently display this number will be ready early next week. I called ee, and was reintroduced back into the omnishambles of your call centre.
Initially I was told that I wouldn't be eligible for a second number and would have to go for a business account (which, surprise surprise is more expensive). The third representative I was passed along to seemed confused and said that yes, of course I can have a second number. So it was agreed that I would pay £9 a month, and that in order to access and activate this eSim I would just need to wait half an hour and go into the app**.
An hour later, I called back, and then recieved a call back from a technical advisor who informed me (really politely, she was really nice during the whole exchange) that that unfortunately isn't how eSims work through ee, and that I was going to recieve a QR code on Monday that I'd need to activate. I asked if she could cancel, and she did it for me. She suggested getting a PAYG sim and converting it (as I'd have the number today), and I thanked her for the suggestion but explained that at this point, I don't think ee is a service provider that I want to proceed with.
Everyone I've spoken to today was at least nice (unlike before), but I cannot rely on a company that doesn't know whether it's coming or going when it comes to something as important as business communications. Maybe I could have overlooked the previous experience when it came to my personal contract renewal if every other experience had been positive, but situations like today do not inspire confidence or build trust. My experience with ee is that you are a communications company that cannot even communicate with itself, and requiring assistance of any kind is akin to playing a one-armed-bandit where half of the potential outcomes are being kicked in the groin.
*you're literally a large-scale telecommunications company, how the hell do you have so much downtime? The minecraft servers I built as a 14 year old have more uptime than your call centre's servers seem to.
**never in my life have I used a worse app than the ee app. Its a labyrinthine, poorly organised, poorly optimised glorified advertising portal that ultimately just redirects you to the website through links that half the time return an error code of one kind or another. If you're going to do a service this badly, don't bother, it would look more professional if you told people to "Google it" at this point.
