My neighbour asked if he could borrow the van to help move his son next week. Sure, I’ll put you on the insurance, I cheerily replied. Having the morning at my desk I gave the insurance company a call, I needed to renew the policy as well.

 

After about twenty minutes being told how important my call was, it was answered. After a brief conversation I was told that I had to talk to renewals and another long wait I went through the process of renewing and adding the neighbour.

 

The new policy starts on December first. The neighbours son is moving on November 25. So I had to then go back to customer services for a change to the existing policy. After another long wait, I was informed that to add the neighbour for the day I needed to pay an additional £52 on top of a premium that had doubled in 12 months. After I expressed my dissatisfaction in the strongest terms, they dropped it to £32. So why the larger amount? Was it based on cost, or profit maximisation? Are all you polite folk out there paying more than those of us prepared to challenge?Losing the will to further the conversion, I agreed to the charge which they were going to bill me for. I couldn’t get off the phone fast enough.

 

Following the afternoon preparing the weeks orders I sat down to pay the additional charge. An email told me that I could view the payment on my on line account. Not having logged in for over three years I struggled to log on, not quite getting my email address right. It may be my failing eyesight, my fat fingers or the exhaustion of running a physically demanding business. Anyway, I still couldn’t see it, so with a sense of dread, I asked for a call, which involved finding the policy number, the registration number of the vehicle and my date of birth as an eight digit number, and that was just to request a call, for which I am still waiting.

 

I would have sooner paid for the rental of a van than gone through that stress. It got me thinking about customer service and what would happen to my business if I kept customers waiting that long and forcing them through a process that works for me rather than them. What if I doubled my prices and base my charges on what I could get away with rather a strict cost plus pricing structure? Why do we put up with it? Perhaps it’s just me being a grumpy old man.