Muppets

[Guest Mac750]

I want to work in Honda customer services. 

 

Hello my name is Zeta how can I help.

"Hi Zeta my bike makes a howling noise"

Sorry to hear you are unhappy please take it to your dealer.

 

Hello my name is Katiya how can I help.

"Hi Zeta said I should take it back to my dealer but they did nothing" .

Sorry to hear you are unhappy I will send you a list of dealers in your area.

 

Hello my name is Nadia how can I help

"Hi Katiya sent me a list of dealers in my area they are all car dealerships not bikes. 

Sorry to hear you are not happy I will issue a complaint number what is the problem you are having again ?

Click, burrrrrrrrrrrrr. 

Totally and utterly useless. 

 

[Andy m 23,493]

I have run teams that take these calls (not out of choice). What do you want them to do?

 

1. They can try and talk you through the problem. When you decide to eat the oil filter or round off all the nuts and bolts with your plumbing tools you will complain more.

 

2. They can call the dealer on your behalf. The dealer will know, or at least claim you are a whinging muppet who's putting diesel in because you think it'll get better MPG. They are independent businesses who if pushed too hard will drop the brand. If you ask them to do the job they send you the bill. If you have to pay it you have blown all the money that was made on the sale and the accountants come looking for you. The dealers know you will pay and think it isn't your money, so rack the bill up.

 

3. They can **** you off so you go trade it for a Kawasaki. The nice customer who doesn't break things and whinge about it and expect constant margin destroying free stuff * may be unwilling to wait while Kawasaki get a second bike in and buy a Honda instead. Regardless, they are shot of you. Yes, the baby goes with the bathwater, but babies are 90% water anyway.

 

*once you surrender, the occupation is often more painful that fighting to the death. Thanks for fixing my bike. What about my taxi fares? Do I get a free helmet as compensation? My mate wants the same? I'm worried about the resale value, can I have a new one.....

 

4. They could employ their own service people. Customers love it. Man in a Honda van and overalls turns up next day, fixes it free of charge. Take a 30K plus salary, add the NI etc. add the thousands for the van and the stuff in the van, multiply by seven to cover the whole country, divide by one or two extra bikes you'd sell over your competitors. You are better running a competition to win a free bike, you'd get tens of extra sales from that. Look at BMW, service levels way down from the height of their brand building in the 80's and growing faster than they ever did. Customer service sells nothing, Ducati prove it.

 

The people on the phones are pretty powerless. They work for Honda, it is their job to do what is best for Honda. It's a rotten job. 

 

Personally I'm too honest to be in customer service. I would shut down the help line* and tell the end user they simply aren't worth the hassle. If they want pleasantries but the same lack of action try our competitors. If they want action, follow the money/legal contract and make the dealer do what he is paid for.

 

*"Your call is important to is...." on queue systems really hacks me off. Its the first lie they tell you to play on your emotions. Its as up there with "It's not you, I just need a bit more space in my life right now..." or "The cheques in the post". "Our lines are all in use please wait or press 1 to hear an e-mail address which will balance our workload" sets an honest tone IMHO.

 

I would also get rid of the dealers. Better to be Amazon* than WH Smith. This means Honda IS the dealer, so two birds with one stone. This is unpopular as the three way ping pong on customer service is useful to the dishonest, the chiselers, the gob****s on all three sides. It will come but it will be a Chinese manufacturer.

 

*Amazon customer service is brilliant. You play by the rules you get sorted (and they are pretty generous). You act like a two year old and "want to talk to a real person" (to chisel free stuff and queue jump) you get the runaround. It is fair, efficient and works which is what we should be doing over niceties for those who shout loudest.

 

Andy

Edited June 2, 2017 by Andy m

[Andy m 23,493]

Item 4 is fun BTW. We do have service guys at work. One in ten visits is to a competitor product. Some are honest and tell you they just thought that as you are so helpful (and free) they thought you wouldn't mind. Others try the "Oh really? What-a-mistaka-to-make-a. Can you fix it? (For free) ". 

 

Andy

Edited June 2, 2017 by Andy m

[Guest Mac750]

Not 100% sure what you are driving at Andy, it's a bit early in the morning my brain will warm up directly. 

My complaints was due to heavy induction noise due to air box housing cracked, which I found and sorted myself some weeks later . Swing arm damage caused by dealers chimp fitting a silencer by throwing it on and kicking it until it looked about right and tyre noise which has reduced as wear increases. But was a concern when first purchased.  Dealer didn't want to repair silencer or swing arm.  Honda customer service informed and each time I contacted them I got someone else.

Having paid cash for my machine I demanded the above faults sorted which is not too much to ask.  

Finally I had to throw the keys back at the dealer and claim my right to a refund in full.  They then fixed the swing arm, sent the exhaust back to the manufacturer for fit assessment ( still on going 7 months later) and in effect gave me the finger. 

So will I use that dealership again ? Will I #*"#. Will I take the opportunity to broadcast my displeasure at every opportunity, yes Dammerals of Cornwall I would not go near the place now.

Edited June 2, 2017 by Mac750
Predictive text

[Andy m 23,493]

I can fully understand the frustration. It is galling that a business with Honda logo's on every available surface is really DamnAlls wideboys and motorcycle breakers.  The fact they will then use the "its says OXO on busses..." routine is part of the sales model and is indded smoke and mirrors of the first order.

 

My point is that you didn't buy anything from Honda (or indeed the airbox or swingarm manufaturer). Honda customer service are therefore playing by the rules of this dishonest game when they tell you to talk to the dealer. The Honda employees have a tough time playing agony aunt to people who've just come to realise this. Not assigning individuals to each case BTW is the way to protect their sanity. 

 

Andy

 

 

[embee 7,288]

I know what Andy is saying, the consumer's contract is with the retailer not the manufacturer, that's the legal position so use it if necessary.

 

Personally I usually take the easy way out, my life is too short. Bad service? Take my business elsewhere and forget about it (if possible). Obviously not always possible, but a case of overfilled oil and possibly failure to drain/change oil and filter, do it yourself and know it's done right. Don't go back for more cr*p.

[Guest kakeyed]

On 5/27/2017 at 17:24, aldmannie said:

  On 5/27/2017 at 16:07, sullspots said:

will probs now look more towards the Teutonic offerings??

 

FFS don't do that, they're even worse.

He's absolutely right - Don't do that!! I'm selling my BMW 'cause I just don't trust it to take me more than 100kms from home. The ABS pump quit a while ago; not drastic as the brakes still work, just without ABS, but the cost of parts and repair are mind-numbing. The real snag is the final drive - that's the second time it fails in 130k kms (this bike has not been abused and the F.D. oil has been changed yearly). Of course, cost parts and repair are ball-tingling, but the worst thing is the real danger associated with that failure as the bearing cage disintegrates, allowing the bearings to fall into the gears, while it chews up the main seal, which in turn lets oil cover the rear brake and tire.

 

The icing on the cake was the service manager and mechanic both smiling at me knowingly and explaining that it's normal to have final drive failures at 50 to 70k km intervals. WTF!?

 

[Guest kakeyed]

Just now, kakeyed said:

Taking the back wheel off, the seal and some parts of the bearing cage fell out. The rest of the bearing cage is in the final drive gearbox, along with the rest of the bearings. I hear that metal parts floating around gears don't play well together. BMW knows about this issue and really don't care, so NO!, don't buy a BMW.

 

[Rev Ken 6,327]

I think BMW makes too many model changes and fail to do enough testing, leaving it to owners. However I'm very happy with my F800GT as it has a Rotax engine and a belt drive. So far it has proved to be reliable and great fun to ride, having just covererd 1300 miles doing the NC500, with diversions together with another 7 bikes ridden by people I like and trust, all being excellent riders. Most of them have had BMWs, but have moved away from them and I'm now the only one with a BMW! 

[coopers12345 99]

On ‎02‎/‎06‎/‎2017 at 08:24, Andy m said:

 

The people on the phones are pretty powerless. They work for Honda, it is their job to do what is best for Honda. It's a rotten job. 

 

Personally I'm too honest to be in customer service. I would shut down the help line* and tell the end user they simply aren't worth the hassle. If they want pleasantries but the same lack of action try our competitors. If they want action, follow the money/legal contract and make the dealer do what he is paid for.

 

 

 

It's a balancing act, people on the phones are under pressure to clear calls as quickly as possible but the customer often wants to waffle on.  I work in customer service and arguably I'm too blunt, luckily the shifts I work don't get many calls

 

When I was in a previous job I got accused of "not giving a shit" by another branch manager who called my regional director to complain that I'd told her we couldn't do what she wanted us. I explained that the reason it sounded like that was because I'd told her straight that we couldn't do what she wanted and nothing I could do/say would change that, should I have pretended to be devastated?

 

I miss the nights when I was working the bar in clubs; if a customer was rude to you and mouthing off, you'd tell them to **** off(guaranteed a surprise look and they were surprisingly polite after that). Now I have to sit there patiently whilst they rant and rave about things that are out of my direct control or because they were told the wrong thing by one of my colleagues.

[Rocker66 34,407]

8 hours ago, coopers12345 said:

 

It's a balancing act, people on the phones are under pressure to clear calls as quickly as possible but the customer often wants to waffle on.  I work in customer service and arguably I'm too blunt, luckily the shifts I work don't get many calls

 

When I was in a previous job I got accused of "not giving a shit" by another branch manager who called my regional director to complain that I'd told her we couldn't do what she wanted us. I explained that the reason it sounded like that was because I'd told her straight that we couldn't do what she wanted and nothing I could do/say would change that, should I have pretended to be devastated?

 

I miss the nights when I was working the bar in clubs; if a customer was rude to you and mouthing off, you'd tell them to **** off(guaranteed a surprise look and they were surprisingly polite after that). Now I have to sit there patiently whilst they rant and rave about things that are out of my direct control or because they were told the wrong thing by one of my colleagues.

 Can fully sympathise when working I had to deal with the public when train services got disrupted. For instance driver gets his lorry stuck under bridge My fault. Herd of cattle get onto line My fault trespasser on line My fault. The thing that really used to annoy me was when somebody would ask. A question and then talk over you whilst you tried to give them an answer. Towards the end if they started to swear at me I would simply say" I'm sorry  but I'm trying to help but if you just want to swear at me I'm not prepared to continue the conversation " I would then just walk away. Somehow I managed to get through all the years without resorting to swearing at a customer. Swore about a lot of them though😀😀

[Guest aldmannie]

Was the wrong kind of snow your fault Rocker?  

[Rocker66 34,407]

20 minutes ago, aldmannie said:

Was the wrong kind of snow your fault Rocker?  

No that was a stupid misquote from a journalist who obviously knew FA about trains and how they work

[larryblag 14,236]

And it's never fully explained that lack of adhesion caused by railhead contamination (leaves on the line) is only part of the problem - much worse are the (wrong side) track circuit failures that make trains "invisible" to the signalling system. 

Older stock used to have tread brakes which cleared off quite a bit of this stuff from the train wheels whereas the modern disc brake vehicles don't do this. 

Edited June 5, 2017 by larryblag

[larryblag 14,236]

BT are the best at this. 

We had a line fault so I reported it. I had to do this using my mobile since the noise was so bad you couldn't hear a thing. The nice lady couldn't understand at first why I hadn't called on my landline. Eventually she said she would perform a line test and ring me back.

When she did it was like the late Norman Collier on the other end. But through all the white noise she managed to tell me that she'd done the test and nothing was wrong with the line... !!!

[Rocker66 34,407]

12 minutes ago, larryblag said:

And it's never fully explained that lack of adhesion caused by railhead contamination (leaves on the line) is only part of the problem - much worse are the (wrong side) track circuit failures that make trains "invisible" to the signalling system. 

Older stock used to have tread brakes which cleared off quite a bit of this stuff from the train wheels whereas the modern disc brake vehicles don't do this. 

Made me a fair amount of dosh working the Sandite on long night shifts though:)

[SteveThackery 3,090]

2 hours ago, larryblag said:

BT are the best at this. 

But through all the white noise she managed to tell me that she'd done the test and nothing was wrong with the line... !!!

 

I used to work for BT, and can confirm this.  Basically, most noise faults are impossible to detect by remote testing*.  The trouble is, the help desk people aren't told this, so they simply don't believe the line is faulty if it tests OK.  Also, BT is slow at fixing faults and is happy to discourage fault reports by making out there is nothing wrong.

 

Noise faults are also quite difficult to locate, because the usual location techniques like TDR (time domain reflectometry) won't work on noise faults.  This means the technician is usually stuck with having to perform various splits on the line to home in on the exact location.  Can be time consuming.

*For completeness, I should add that some noise faults are detectable remotely - it depends on the exact mechanism of failure.

[SteveThackery 3,090]

10 hours ago, Rocker66 said:

No that was a stupid misquote from a journalist who obviously knew FA about trains and how they work

 

Hang on, I saw a programme about this.  It was definitely something to do with the characteristics of the snow and the air intakes.  I can't remember the details - the snow was either unusually dry or unusually wet (the former sounds more likely), or maybe unusually fine.  I think it melted unexpectedly in the wrong place and caused water damage.

Hmmm.... my memory is extremely sketchy.  Can anyone fill in the details?

 

Edit: Ah, yes, here we go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_wrong_type_of_snow

The snow was unusually fine, dry and powdery so it got picked up by the air intakes:

 

Worral explained that "we are having particular problems with the type of snow, which is rare in the UK". Naughtie replied "Oh, I see, it was the wrong kind of snow," to which Worrall replied, "No, it was a different kind of snow". The exchange prompted a headline in the London Evening Standard saying "British Rail blames the wrong type of snow" which was swiftly taken up by the media and other papers.

 

So there is a grain of truth in it.

Edited June 5, 2017 by SteveThackery

[baben 11,703]

On 5/29/2017 at 22:56, larryblag said:

We make Birds Whisk & Serve in ours. Then it gets pride of place on the dining room table at pudding time. Our guests love the minimalist approach 

You have guests?

[Jeffprince 4,921]

BT pays my pension......

Call centre staff have a terrible life...conversations led by systems, so they need minimal training, continuously measured, monitored and targeted, driven by stats, treated like numbers (despite nods to motivation). The only variety during the shift is they get to say good afternoon, instead of good morning. I feel for them.

 

 

 

[Rocker66 34,407]

11 minutes ago, SteveThackery said:

 

Hang on, I saw a programme about this.  It was definitely something to do with the characteristics of the snow and the air intakes.  I can't remember the details - the snow was either unusually dry or unusually wet (the former sounds more likely), or maybe unusually fine.  I think it melted unexpectedly in the wrong place and caused water damage.

Hmmm.... my memory is extremely sketchy.  Can anyone fill in the details?

 

Edit: Ah, yes, here we go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_wrong_type_of_snow

The snow was unusually fine, dry and powdery so it got picked up by the air intakes:

 

Worral explained that "we are having particular problems with the type of snow, which is rare in the UK". Naughtie replied "Oh, I see, it was the wrong kind of snow," to which Worrall replied, "No, it was a different kind of snow". The exchange prompted a headline in the London Evening Standard saying "British Rail blames the wrong type of snow" which was swiftly taken up by the media and other papers.

 

So there is a grain of truth in it.

Yes that's right but it was a journalist that first used the phrase wrong type of snow which was then attributed to the railway company to make them sound stupid. The media do the same with the leaves on the line thing making it sound like a stupid excuse when as Larryblag will confirm there is a scientific reason for it. Next Autumn get a leaf and rub it between your fingers. The stuff that comes out is what gets on the rail head and causes the adhesion problems which mean that when the driver brakes the wheels just skid. This not only makes stopping difficult hence they run the trains at reduced speed but it also causes flats on the tyres.

[SteveThackery 3,090]

Just now, Rocker66 said:

The media do the same with the leaves on the line thing making it sound like a stupid excuse when as Larryblag will confirm there is a scientific reason for it. Next Autumn get a leaf and rub it between your fingers. The stuff that comes out is what gets on the rail head and causes the adhesion problems which mean that when the driver brakes the wheels just skid. This not only makes stopping difficult hence they run the trains at reduced speed but it also causes flats on the tyres.

 

Oh, yes, I'm familiar with it.  I've seen it when I went on a tour of a rail workshop.  However, their description was slightly different.  They explained that running over leaves compresses them into a hard, thin, brown layer on the wheel, a bit like a varnish.  This builds up on the wheels and eventually acts as an electrical insulator.  They showed a way of mitigating it, which comprised a frame which fits around the bogie and carries some kind of alternating current and works a bit like the primary winding of a transformer.  It induces a high voltage between the wheel and the track, sufficiently high to break down the insulating layer.  At least, that's the best my memory can dredge up!

 

You seem to be describing a different phenomenon, to do with altering the coefficient of friction between the wheel and track.  Perhaps both problems arise from leaves.

[Rocker66 34,407]

13 minutes ago, SteveThackery said:

 

Oh, yes, I'm familiar with it.  I've seen it when I went on a tour of a rail workshop.  However, their description was slightly different.  They explained that running over leaves compresses them into a hard, thin, brown layer on the wheel, a bit like a varnish.  This builds up on the wheels and eventually acts as an electrical insulator.  They showed a way of mitigating it, which comprised a frame which fits around the bogie and carries some kind of alternating current and works a bit like the primary winding of a transformer.  It induces a high voltage between the wheel and the track, sufficiently high to break down the insulating layer.  At least, that's the best my memory can dredge up!

 

You seem to be describing a different phenomenon, to do with altering the coefficient of friction between the wheel and track.  Perhaps both problems arise from leaves.

The official definition is reduced speed due to poor rail head conditions. This causes the driver to have to brake more gently and can actually lead to run byes. During the leaf season SouthEastern run a modified timetable to allow for running at reduced speeds..

As to the wheels for a time I worked in Chart Leacock repair shop their was extra shifts worked changing wheel sets due to flats.

[larryblag 14,236]

Yes, two separate problems caused by the same contamination.

One symptom is as described causing poor railhead adhesion. Makes for difficult station starts, stops and yes, wheel flats and railhead damage.

The other symptom is that it insulates train from track making it "disappear" from the signalmans panel for a time - or worse the contamination gets onto the wheelset making the train invisible wherever it goes!

 

I should add that we are now using more and more of another method of train detection called axle counters.  These are inductive devices that are mounted at the side of the track and as the names suggests detect the passing of each axle of a train. Consequently these are unaffected by leaf fall.

[Rocker66 34,407]

13 minutes ago, larryblag said:

Yes, two separate problems caused by the same contamination.

One symptom is as described causing poor railhead adhesion. Makes for difficult station starts, stops and yes, wheel flats and railhead damage.

The other symptom is that it insulates train from track making it "disappear" from the signalmans panel for a time - or worse the contamination gets onto the wheelset making the train invisible wherever it goes!

 

I should add that we are now using more and more of another method of train detection called axle counters.  These are inductive devices that are mounted at the side of the track and as the names suggests detect the passing of each axle of a train. Consequently these are unaffected by leaf fall.

A bit like the old hot box detectors then.