Arrival

The invitation from Whine and Cheese arrived at last. The welcome post was succinct indeed and I can add no more on the subject of our inaugural meeting except to write that the participants were extraordinarily tidy munchers and no wine was spilled. I usually need warning flags attached to my knife and fork....

I have done a little bit of basic research on the subject of whining. It seems that there is international, general condemnation of all so called 'customer services' departments with special criticism of those in the telecoms/ISP business. The consensus is that these departments were set up to defend the organization against attack in the face of poor performance of product or service. There is little attempt apparently at delivering the customer service brief which I in my niaivity think is to provide 'service recovery' (such as a refund, replacement, compensation, apology or a mix from these).

So it might be that an effective whine needs to bypass customer services entirely.

They are staffed by script readers rather than decision makers and it is the decision makers who can deliver the solution the whiner is seeking. I suppose it makes sense in the first instance for the whiner to have a clear idea of what he or she wants from the miscreant organization.
This idea should be in the bounds of commercial reality though. In law, compensation is mostly about setting the claimant back to the financial position they were in before they bought the product or service. Anything above that is a bonus.

A German friend who, like me is a buying manager, said to me he applies the same rules to his personal purchases as he does in his business responsibilities. In a nutshell he is ruthless towards any organization which delivers substandard service or product regardless. I identify with this approach but recognise that in B2B we often deal with dedicated account managers/directors who are much easier to get a result from than a faceless customer services assistant/supervisor/manager.
So there; back we are to stepping over the call centre completely.
But each claim will probably need a tailored approach and not all customer service operations are rubbish and also as mentioned in the welcome post, there are the very serious, moral issues concerning all of us about poor health care, the dignity of the human condition and the treatment of the vulnerable. We sometimes have to support our fellows as well as ourselves.
That's also a part of this group.

Delivered.

Welcome

Welcome to The Whine and Cheese Club blog. We had our first meeting on Tuesday March 8th in north west London, and somehow, out of all the rhetoric and the ranting, the scoffing and the surmising, the outrage, the outpourings, the olives, the treacle tart and the red wine, an idea was put into action - the establishment of a Club with the express aim of making life a little bit better, not just for the members but for everyone whose jaw clenches with anxiety or frustration when faced with the red tape and idiot-card inspired information that turns everyday irritations into insurmountable obstacles. Our inaugural whines included a correspondence with The Royal Free Hospital, Hampstead, over the inhumane issue of incontinence pants to elderly patients who are not incontinent, and a ding-dong with Stuart Rose over the threadcount in M&S socks. The first whine, by Shyama, resulted in a series of fob offs from customer relations managers working for the NHS trust. The general consensus within the group was that the issue, which had been laid to rest with the untimely death of the patient around whom the complaint was made, should be pursued because of the impact on all patients within The Royal Free. The second complaint had, however, elicited an immediate result. Our whiner, Peter, having sent the offending sock to Mr Rose with an explanation that it had developed a hole after one wash, was sent a cheque for £10. While this does not relieve the problem to which he drew attention, it does at least compensate for the irritation. We had a proxy whine from Hashida, who read us a letter her mother had sent to complain about the rudeness of a care worker on a community bus. A broad sweep of interest areas emerged as our conversation continued. Karen left us all in a state of disbelief while describing how she had been issued with a notice for flytipping because she left sealed rubbish by an overflowing municipal bin. Robin instructed us that the best people to approach when making complaints are those at the top who have dedicated staff investigating consumer issues. Reilly, another vociferous complainer, talked about wider campaigns and making the personal political. Krista's view was that all complaints have a validity beyond the personal and therefore all subject matter is fair game. Indeed, that was the general view, with the caveat that complaints must be genuine and not manifestations of inner turmoil, midlife crisis or an inability to deal with the everyday! Our next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday April 17th. If you'd like to affiliate to our group, please leave a message. Thanks:-) Shyama