Rant - service providers who are inaccessible to the consumer
Posted: February 4th, 2023, 9:55 am
I am getting increasingly frustrated with the business model where the consumer deals with one company but the underlying service is being provided by another. The consumer might be able to see that the issue lies with the underlying service but has no means of contacting the provider - and the customer-facing company seems to be incapable of operating effectively with them either. Two real world examples I am dealing with;
Smart Meters
We own our own home and 2 holiday lets. All 3 have SMETS2 Smart Meters installed. One stopped reporting back in November 2021 after Storm Arwen. The others stopped working at different points in 2022. I am powerless to get this fixed. I have been on online chats with our energy supplier (Bulb) countless times and they cannot get it fixed, because a 3rd party is responsible for the network it uses. Siemens installs them and I think DCC (a subsidiary of Crapita - as Private Eye calls them) runs the network. Smart meters were great for the 2 holiday lets but just as Staycations get more popular and household fuel gets more expensive they are of zero use to me. I did ask Bulb to send me a resolution deadlock letter so I could raise it with the ombudsman but I hesitated in case our holiday lets should not be on domestic fuel supplies(?).
Broadband and Phone
Since around Boxing Day I've been trying to swap broadband suppliers at one of our properties and it keeps failing. The initial reason was that Openreach thought our property's original name and new name were 2 different properties even though we were original owners of the property and officially changed the builder's name for it via the local council and Royal Mail nearly 10 years ago. So when trying to do a line takeover they said there was no service to the property. I won't bore you with the catalogue of disasters and the fact that order number 6 from the new supplier has failed even though the address issue has been fixed. And who fixed the data issue? Me by ringing the new supplier and the old supplier about 12 times to get them to update openreach. And what is the current issue? Who the @!£$! knows? The new supplier certainly doesn't. At the moment, our old supplier have emailed me to say "sorry you are leaving us" for mid-Feb but openreach is telling the new supplier that the old one haven't released it yet.
Both these issues would be a lot easier to fix if I could call the underlying service providers. In fact, it feels to me as if these service providers hide under the covers and are less accountable than they should be.
Thanks for listening
Clariman
Smart Meters
We own our own home and 2 holiday lets. All 3 have SMETS2 Smart Meters installed. One stopped reporting back in November 2021 after Storm Arwen. The others stopped working at different points in 2022. I am powerless to get this fixed. I have been on online chats with our energy supplier (Bulb) countless times and they cannot get it fixed, because a 3rd party is responsible for the network it uses. Siemens installs them and I think DCC (a subsidiary of Crapita - as Private Eye calls them) runs the network. Smart meters were great for the 2 holiday lets but just as Staycations get more popular and household fuel gets more expensive they are of zero use to me. I did ask Bulb to send me a resolution deadlock letter so I could raise it with the ombudsman but I hesitated in case our holiday lets should not be on domestic fuel supplies(?).
Broadband and Phone
Since around Boxing Day I've been trying to swap broadband suppliers at one of our properties and it keeps failing. The initial reason was that Openreach thought our property's original name and new name were 2 different properties even though we were original owners of the property and officially changed the builder's name for it via the local council and Royal Mail nearly 10 years ago. So when trying to do a line takeover they said there was no service to the property. I won't bore you with the catalogue of disasters and the fact that order number 6 from the new supplier has failed even though the address issue has been fixed. And who fixed the data issue? Me by ringing the new supplier and the old supplier about 12 times to get them to update openreach. And what is the current issue? Who the @!£$! knows? The new supplier certainly doesn't. At the moment, our old supplier have emailed me to say "sorry you are leaving us" for mid-Feb but openreach is telling the new supplier that the old one haven't released it yet.
Both these issues would be a lot easier to fix if I could call the underlying service providers. In fact, it feels to me as if these service providers hide under the covers and are less accountable than they should be.
Thanks for listening
Clariman