Who's the customer?

My line is down. This is the line I get from Daisy. As I write this, it's been down for 21 hours, and that's bad.

It isn't dead as a parrot; it's flapping. That means it's up for a while, then down for a while, and so on. It's very annoying.

Daisy can see the problem, and they pushed it up to their supplier, Vodafone. Vodafone provide the line; Daisy is Vodafone's customer and I'm Daisy's customer. Obviously, I pay Daisy for the service and Daisy pay Vodafone. When something goes wrong, it's Daisy's support line that I call, and Daisy talks to Vodafone.

This is all standard stuff. But then ...

I got a call from Daisy, Vodafone want to send out an engineer; a site visit to see what's going wrong. Good idea. But, Daisy says, if the problem isn't with Vodafone's line, they want me to pay for the callout, which they said could be up to £500.

Wait, what? Suddenly I'm Vodafone's customer? No, I'm not. I'm Daisy's customer. If Daisy think that a Vodafone engineer should come out to look at the problem, then it should be a cost on Daisy, if there's a cost on anyone.

Arguing, of course, is fruitless. So I agreed to the callout, and to pay £500 if the engineer finds nothing wrong, which is entirely possible because the line is flapping. It can be OK for several minutes at a time, and then it's down for more than several minutes.

Meanwhile, I've been talking to Daisy about possibly upgrading this leased line to EFM. With TalkTalk, EFM costs about half of what it costs with Daisy, and I told the saleslady that, and told her where on the TalkTalk web site to find their pricing. I do have an account manager at Daisy, and I had been talking to him, but his email address doesn't work (email I send him bounces, and I'm sending it to the email address he emailed me from) and his phone is on voicemail, and if you leave a message no-one calls you back. I thini he's on holiday, and there's no system whereby his accounts are looked after while he's away.

<rant on>
With some companies, including Daisy and TalkTalk, no-one ever calls back. My theory is that this is a company rule, and if anyone were to call you back, it would be more than their job's worth.  I have located a very few exceptionally brave individuals who do call back when left a message, and I'm keeping their identities a closely guarded secret, so as not to get them into trouble.
<rant off>

So I'm not inclined to go with Daisy for their EFM based on price. The failure of my current service with Daisy, reinforces that, and the fact that it's been out for 21 hours (and did the same, twice, in May) doesn't exactly help Daisy's case. My feeling is that it's probably an issue at the exchange, because that's been the cause nearly every time in the past, and they should have got someone out there a *lot* sooner.

With TalkTalk, of course, the problem is the fact that as soon as someone is assigned to my case, either they leave the company, or they're reassigned, or they're off sick, or whatever, and although I completely understand that TalkTalk can't do anything about people leaving or getting flu, in any serious company as soon as someone leaves, their case load should be assigned to other people. Which doesn't seem to happen at TalkTalk until I kick up a fuss.

I suppose there's no perfect service in this world. But if only it wasn't all quite so imperfect.

 ...

And now my line is down, so I'm waiting until it flaps back up so that I can post this ...