Why is customer service getting so bad in New Zealand?

November 27, 2009 by Avalon
Filed under: Cost of living, Future Finances, General Budgeting, Life in New Zealand

Just this last year – companies in New Zealand seen to have gone absolutely doolally with their customer service. As in there isn’t any. Its always been one of the things I really appreciated about life here – that customer service was generally top notch – so much so that it was really noticeable when you got some bad service.

This year – it seems to be a rare as hen’s teeth that companies won’t try and screw you over, and staff won’t lie through their teeth to cover up their mistakes.

I really don’t get why.

I guess this is probably happening the world over – but to be honest – I don’t see why people in New Zealand have to be arseholes just because the rest of the world is. Why can’t we maintain our “reputation” for being good at customer service in the face of a recession (which the people “in the know” say is over anyway)?

The latest stress-inducing idiocy comes from ING Life – with whom we have (or had) life cover and medical insurance, costing us nearly $300 a month in premiums. They slapped an unfair exclusion on both policies – excluding anything to do with our necks. This is because we (foolishly it seems) take a pro-active approach to our health and see an osteopath to reduce the number of headaches we get. Both of us react the same way to stress – our upper back and neck muscles turn to rods of iron, and compress the nerves – both of which cause excruciating headaches. There are a number of ways of treating this – but basically your choices are down bucket loads of strong painkillers, take preventive drugs which will mostly turn your brain to pudding, or go get an osteopath or chiropractor to release the muscles.

One of those options is sensible, effective and leaves your brain operating at 100% rather than being put to sleep by medication.

We have been trying for 5 months to talk to ING about this – and have met the most astounding belligerence and laziness I have yet seen in my time in New Zealand.

All ING have to do is pick up the phone and talk to either our Doctor or the Osteopath. Instead – they want us to waste the time of an Orthopaedic surgeon (who trust me – has better things to do that pander to the twats at ING – like dealing with people who have real injuries), and of course – we have to pay for that – $300 a month in premiums isn’t enough for them to get off their arses apparently.

This is of course for a substantial amount of life cover – we are not talking peanuts here.

Now – ING have resorted to bare faced lying to our broker about what is going on. Apparently – my visits to the osteopath are due to a recent neck injury that I know absolutely bugger all about. Hmmm. They also claim we did not fill out a form for this – only the lazy gits never sent us a form to fill out. Funny how they screwed this up and it’s magically all our fault.

Thing is – if this is how they behave when we are trying to pay them $300 a month – a not insignificant sum of money) – what the hell will they do when it comes time to make a claim???

So Action 1-

We cancelled the life policy and told them to get a grip or risk losing all the business.

Action 2 –
We are about to start the process of finding another home for Hubbys pension fund. Its only about $40,000 – but these bozos are not fit to look after our future money even it was only 5c.

Action 3 –

They have 1 week to fix this mess – or we cancel the medical cover as well. I refuse to give money to people this incompetent and this prepared to lie through their back teeth. It may be a “good policy” on paper – but in fact it isn’t if you have to be treated like shit when you are trying to do business with someone.

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Tags: Investing in general, Life in New Zealand

Comments

3 Comments on Why is customer service getting so bad in New Zealand?

hubby on Sat, 28th Nov 2009 9:17 pm

The one thing that occurs to me on a general level is this. Companies lay off staff, or don’t replace staff who leave, so those still in the job are now doing the workload of multiple people. Which means they don’t have the time to properly spend dealing with customers. More and more things go into the ‘too hard’ bucket and you don’t have the time to deal with everything urgent before the next urgent stuff comes in. Suddenly stuff doesn’t get done, and it’s just easier to deal with the urgent & simple stiff.
Which is Poor customer care & focus, and not how I work – doesn’t stop the pressure tho.

menace on Mon, 30th Nov 2009 1:00 pm