Tag Archives: Customer Service

Tesco Internet Phone Still A Problem

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The Tesco Internet phone problem has still not been resolved. The service ‘stopped’ on 27 April. Although helpfully now people can still ring my number and leave a message that I can’t retrieve. I can’t stop them from leaving a message as I can no longer log in to the Tesco service to make any changes like turning my voicemail off. This situation is even worse than the number being dead.

Looking around on the web it seems that the whole situation is being / was badly managed by Tesco. I have seen reports of people ringing the Tesco Internet Phone / Freshtel customer service line only to be told that the person answering the call ‘has no idea what I am talking about and has not heard of the company’.

There does look to be a faint glimmer of hope in the distance though, it seems that Voice Host ‘may’ be doing something with the Tesco numbers, their website has a big banner in the corner saying Tesco Internet Phone customers to click and you can E-mail them at tesco@voicehost.co.uk I have dropped them an E-mail and will update here as and when I get a response.

I’m of the opinion that Tesco should answer questions and make an offer of some kind of compensation for the way they have dealt with this.

Shafted By Tesco The Saga Continues

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So continuing on from my post yesterday about the Tesco Internet phone fiasco.

I did a bit of digging around and sent one final mail to Tesco last night.

Hi
further to my previous mail, on looking on the OFCOM site and this page

you will see the final point

The provider must inform you about your ability to keep your number if you choose to switch providers at a later date.

Please inform me how I keep my number as I now choose to switch to another provider

Kind regards

Mike

This afternoon I received the following part canned response from Freshtel

Dear Mike,

Thank you for your recent e-mail.

You have recently contacted Tesco Internet Phone to enquire about taking your Tesco Internet Phone number to another provider.

We have been investigating alternative arrangements with a number of parties including the communications regulator, Ofcom, to try and make this possible.

Despite our efforts and after exploring a range of options unfortunately we have not found a workable solution for Tesco internet phone customers to take their internet phone number to another service provider.

Tesco is not exempt from Ofcom’s rules. However, due to the closure of our partner Freshtel’s UK business, number portability is not technically feasible.

This is because the UK number porting system is based on forward routing of calls. As Freshtel will be closing its business, a forward routing porting solution will not be possible.

We can understand this will be disappointing, we are sorry for any inconvenience caused.

From 27th April your Tesco internet phone account will be closed and the service will not be available. You will no longer be able to access your online account or be able to make calls using your Tesco internet phone.

Thank you for contacting us, please let me know if you have any further queries, alternatively call our customer care team on 0845 300 2020* – free from your Tesco internet phone or visit our website http://www.tescointernetphone.com

Kind Regards,

Michael A
Tesco Internet Phone

So it really does seem as if we have no recourse as Tesco / Freshtel are closing the UK operation and therefore can’t allow a number to be ported to another provider.

I’m not sure I can be bothered sending any further E-mails to them as most of the points seem to get ignored, but I will point Tesco Customer Services and Sir Terry Leahy to my posts.

Customer Service By Twitter

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I had forgotten about quite a nice tweet exchange from a couple of weeks ago until I saw @Jasonhall tweet a link to this story about someone tweeting about a problem with their mobile phone provider.

A couple of weeks ago Mrs R and I went to London for a wedding. We booked in to The May Fair Hotel, who I now know are also on Twitter as @TheMayFairHotel. As ever and much to my wifes consternation I tweeted and checked in using Gowalla and thought no more of it.

After a night out in the big city I checked in on Twitter to see that The May Fair Hotel had seen my tweet and taken the time to respond.

Now as far as I am aware The May Fair Hotel were not following me and were unlikely to know I am a Twitter user, so they are actively searching Twitter for references to their hotel and responding to them.  My experience at the hotel was positive so it is quite an easy thing to do but I would imagine given the level of customer care in the hotel generally that they would deal with negative tweets as well, or certainly use them as a conduit for making contact with an unhappy customer and dealing with the issues off-line.

It is hard to imagine that anyone would tweet anything particularly negative about this hotel,

1, it is a very good hotel  and nothing was too much trouble.

2, if a guest did have a problem I’m sure they would address it directly with the staff before tweeting something.

A simple lesson is to be learnt from this, if you are going to use twitter in your business for marketing or whatever, make sure you run searches for your brand & keywords. Not all your customers will be following you or even know you exist on Twitter and unless you look for them and what they are saying you can’t hear them..