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A new episode in my experience with Canon products and the lie of customer service.

or: Why Canon deserve to fail as a consumer electronics company

A little more than a year ago, our Canon photo printer stopped working properly. We truly had not used it loads, yet it failed shortly after the warrantee year had elapsed. And no, I am sure I had lost the receipt.

I could not afford to go through the uphill climb of pursuing the fault through technical support. I started. I tried. But it was impossible. Their opening hours were 0800hs to 1800hrs Mon to Fri. Well, bloody hell! - I go to work during those hours, plus change. What happens when you call customer support about a failed printer or PC? They ask you to be sitting next to the device so they can diagnose the problem. Well, that wasn't going to happen.

I returned to the shop where I'd bought the printer. I was looking to buy a new camera at the time. I ended up buying a Canon DSLR. Canon DSLR cameras are, as far as I can tell, about the best, so I am not going to excuse myself for buying one of those. I saw that a newer Selphy photo printer was current. The man in the shop surprisingly (lol) said that hey were really good. So, not knowing anything about any other alternatives printers, I got them to swing a reasonable deal to include the new Selphy in the purchase.

Of course, ten months on and the fucking device has failed, and in exactly the same way that the previous printer failed. Canon's technical support hours have shrunk by an hour at either end of the day. The thing went wrong this evening. How am I going to contact them to get some help? They probably have a moat around their building with the drawbridge pulled up too.

All I can do to get any satisfacton is to publicise what has happened and my analysis of the situation. So you can be sure that I will.

Here is a copy of the message I sent through their online "Contact Us" function:-





To add insult to the injury, here is the acknowledgement page that I was greeted with after submitting my message:-







UPDATE 03-Dec-2012

Realising that the above was Canon's way of saying, "I'm not listening!" I decided to send my note to them again:-




This time I got a more positive web page as a response. Apparently I have a Serice Request ID":-

"Your Service Request ID is:1-627760970"

Here's copy of a message I have just sent to Carphone Warehouse regarding a SIM contract that I bought
from them over the phone:-




If you want something done properly, you have to beat someone about the face with a kettle.



06-Nov-2012 UPDATE

I did not receive a reply from Carphone Warehouse. The answer I deduce from this is that they are prepared to do nothing about it. I sorted it out myself by calling Talkmobile and ordering a Micro SIM separately. Initially my choice of IVR options, after calling the customer service number, got me through to a Carphone Warehouse agent who assured me that I would be charged £15 for the Micro SIM; then I got put through to a Talkmobile agent who assured me that this would be free. Give it up for connected business processes. In the meantime I popped into a local Carephone Warehouse store and got a refund for the unnecessary Micro SIM converter.

So I sent another message to Carphone Warehouse through their online Contact Us message page, which reads as follows:-

I called up T-Mobile customer services (I used the term ironically) today. I want to ask them about some calls I was charged for on my bill. It's not a lot of money but it could be a mistake, so it makes sense to ask them, right?

When you call any company of reasonable size these days, you have to work your way through a seemingly interminable sequence of options: Press 1 for this, 2 for that and 3 for the other. And then when you do press 1, it takes you through another round of options. It is like wading through treacle.

Here's a funny thing. With T-Mobile there is no option to "Ask about your account" or "Ask about your bill". I mean, we know there won't be an option to "Speak with an advisor" - that would be silly - but you might expect that making inquiries might be in there somewhere. Apparently I can leave T-Mobile, upgrade my price plan, ask for handy tips or indeed a variety of other specific things. But actually just ask a question? No, fuck off. Anyway, I plumped for the closest match - "Change your account details" (well, it had the word "account" in it) and I stuck it out for the ten-or-so minutes the IVR warned me I would need to wait. It seems that whenever I call T-Mobile the contact centre is extremely busy. Imagine that.

Finally I got through to a man for whom English is clearly not his first language. Why would it be? - he lives in the Philippines. I was irritated enough that I have to decipher what the man is saying through a heavy accent but when I found that he just did not listen to me and would only repeat what I had said to him, I was getting a bit cross. Finally we arrived at an understanding of what my question was.

My question is simple, really: I've been charged for some calls on my latest bill and I don't know why. I think they should be included in my call allowance. I'd like an explanation. The contact centre agent finally understood what I was asking. He then failed to exhibit basic thinking skills and offered nonsensical explanations - reasons that do not stack up against other details clearly apparent in the bill.

So the man said he would like to call me back and in the meantime would find out the answer to my question. I expressed my anxiety about ending the call, since it took me ten minutes just to get through the first time. He said he would call me back in five minutes. That was nearly an hour ago. Imagine my surprise.

This was actually my second conversation with a T-Mobile contact centre representative. I asked the same question a couple of weekends ago. Same story, only in that call, the representative was even stupider. His lips must have been moving. Noise was coming out of his mouth. But none of it made any sense. T-Mobile then sent me a text-based survey to evaluate my satisfaction with my call to the contact centre. I scored all the questions pretty much as low as possible. For the "Please tell us what we could do better" question, I gave a fairly candid couple of suggestions, to amplify my scores. I wondered if such a low score would generate some further follow-up call to placate a disgruntled customer. What was I thinking?

28-Aug-2013 UPDATE:-
While I never did receive a return phone call from T-Mobile, the spurious charges did appear to get refunded on a subsequent bill. There was no explanation. That is all.

"It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out."
- Carl Sagan



"Some minds are so open that they need to be closed down for repair."
- unattributed

"Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain, and most fools do."
- Benjamin Franklin

"When you lose, don't lose the lesson."
- Dali Lama