Power of the press: part two

 

Further to my last blog about the Broadband provider that cut me off after my partner died, because I didn’t have his password….  and reconnected me ten minutes after I threatened to put the story in my local paper -- here’s a similar tale about another of the major Broadband suppliers.

After that earlier experience as soon as I moved house, I switched supplier.

Not long afterwards there was a problem and Broadband speeds for all of us on our local exchange dropped alarmingly in the evenings, and we don’t get good speeds around here in rural Wales anyway (that's another issue). 

Many local businesses were having difficulty with signals dropping out in the evenings.

Three journalists, including me, and a press photographer, were affected by this problem, which went on for a couple of weeks.

Once I had some evidence, i.e the details of all the journalists affected by this who had complained to the supplier and got nowhere, I called the company's press office.

I was told: “Oh it’s one of those things we probably won’t be able to do anything about very quickly. It’s a line problem.” I asked for an official comment on the problem for my story about how local businesses were suffering.

Later that day, within three hours, the regional director for this supplier personally phoned one of those journalists and promised the problem would be resolved within the day. It was.

Needless to say, we were all pleased to get a result, but all of us were pretty angry that we had to use the threat of bad press,  yet again, to get somewhere with one of our huge corporations.

We all deserve good customer care for the services we pay for. The threat of bad publicity should not be an issue, but sadly, it is.