Misco Shared Services Centre drone brands customer 'insane' A series of customer service blunders by Misco ended with the box-flinging dealer branding a customer "insane". Ross McKillop, a director for a couple of small firms north of the border, ordered a Jabra Pro 9470 Mono headset in November and received confirmation it was on backorder and due to ship on 3 March. But when the …
This depends if he bought as business user or not. As the below does not cover businesses, who will have their own T&C's.
So he may well of been wrong.
Distance selling act:
Has the trader accepted your offer to buy?
To work out whether the trader has accepted your offer, you'll need to check the following:
The wording of your confirmation email or letter. For example, it might specify that the trader has accepted your offer
The contents of the terms and conditions. For example, they might say when acceptance takes place
*Whether the goods have been dispatched or the service has started. If the goods are dispatched to you or the service starts, it would be safe to assume that the trader has accepted your offer*
If payment has been taken. If payment has been taken from you this *does not necessarily mean acceptance has happened*, but it could be a good indicator.
I'm not a business... and bought as a consumer (home address, private card etc) but that aside misco did confirm that the order was "ACCEPTED"... The first eMail is an "Order Request" and clearly states;
"This email is confirmation that we have received your order. It does not constitute contractual acceptance of the order you have placed. We are currently checking that your order remains available at the price(s) advertised on the Misco.co.uk website when you placed your order. If the price or availability has changed we will notify you by email or telephone within one business day of receipt of this email"
Fine, at this point they haven't accepted the order - however the next day they sent an "Order Confirmation" and a PDF Invoice which, in their own terms, states is referred to as follows;
"We will accept your offer and create a Contract with you by sending to you an Order Confirmation once we have confirmed availability of the Goods or Services, verified your credit card or payment details as necessary and prepared the Goods for dispatch. We reserve the right to obtain validation of your credit or debit card details before providing you with any Goods or Services. "
Either way, the actual complaint didn't really bother me and wouldn't have attracted any attention - it was being referred to as "insane" by their customer services team I objected to, i'm many things but don't think insane is one of them... yet.
It's always wise to make sure you understand if the person you are talking to has your first language as their first language. Quite often, a perceived insult is nothing more than a "translation error".
You get it a lot on programming fora: someone posts a question, someone else posts an answer, and the OP comes back with "I have a doubt about your answer". This gets interpreted as "I think your answer is wrong", and the responder gets offended, when in fact it usually means "I don't fully understand your answer and have a follow-up question", which is completely different.
Given the name of the Misco staffer and the fact they apparently work in Hungary, I'm guessing that English is an acquired language, rather than their natural one.
Quite true but herein lays the problem. If you outsource, you either face the consequence of such 'lost in translations' or ensure you hire very good English speakers in your chosen outsource market. Nothing wrng in outsourcing, so long as the customer service is matched or preferably improved.
My boss was negotiating a big deal for network hardware with them, and they seemed to be quite good by all accounts.
Next thing I know, my boss forwarded me an email he'd got: The people at WStore had been doing some internal chatting about our requests for discounts etc. and had managed to CC: him into the email. They quite plainly called him an idiot (for trying to get a discount?).
So I strung them along for weeks and then when they got shirty about wanting us to finally order, I mentioned the email. The guy on the other end went VERY quiet. And then apologised and said he understood why we wouldn't be ordering etc.
I never found out if anything more happened because from the time of the email, that company was on our purchasing blacklist.
> ordered ... in November and received confirmation it was on backorder and due to ship on 3 March.
So the guy was prepared to wait 3 or 4 months for something he could have bought off Amazon, from stock (well: in stock today - maybe not then) and presumably from any number of other companies.
He then goes "Mr Angry" on them (OK, that might be reasonable, if they'd sent him a power cord instead of some sort of headset) and starts quoting the ins-and-outs of british law to a hungarian customer services person.
Given the disparity between the two sides' stories, there does appear to be more than we're being told here. But this won't put me off buying from Misco - though I'd never wait that long for a backorder.
Whatever the ins and out of the case, if he is buying from a UK based company, it would be a reasonable expectation that customer services would be fluent in English and conversant with UK law (sorry, English or that of "the other place") irrespective of where the call centre happens to be based.
Edit> Hah! Mephistro! beat me to it!
If a customer service person calling you insane is the worst thing that happens to you this week, you've got a pretty easy life.
Build a bridge and get over it.
On the subject of websites and pricing mistakes, perhaps the author of the article should have pointed readers to their "partner" for all things legal: Out-Law.
They've got an interesting page on the topic:
http://www.out-law.com/page-429
it would be a reasonable expectation that customer services would be fluent in English and conversant with UK law (sorry, English or that of "the other place") irrespective of where the call centre happens to be based.
@bilat29: You kidding, right? You expect a call centre worker to know the law? I'm happy if they can speak to me in English without a 2-second delay. 3 - you hear me?
I raise your Talk Talk... with Co-Operative energy.
There is incompetence - and then there is plain and stupid fuckwittery - across their whole "customer service" department; which I now realize seemingly only comprises of around 2 people if their stated 10 day response time to emails, and the never ending "call queue" is anything to go by.
When I was at university, I took a holiday job with a mail order computer supplier. A batch of defective interface cards came in (many obvious dry solder joints on each card). I gave them to the boss so he could get them replaced. When those exact same parts came back from customers I walked out. There are places where the way to deal with defective kit is to sell it to other people until someone cannot deal with the bullying from the returns staff.
I used to buy from Misco when they had UK customer service staff. As a business customer, they tried to avoid replacing kit that failed after a month because 'I had not bought an extended warranty'. They also cold called be with sales pitches. As a home customer, they sent me defective kit then tried to blame me for ordering the wrong type of memory (paired SODIMMs - one worked and the other didn't.) Misco's behaviour reminded me of my old temp job.
I switched to Novatech. After years of reliable service, I got my first piece of defective kit from them on Friday. The customer service rep was excellent, and the working replacement is here today (the original order was due tomorrow).
T&C's on all web-stores always have a caveat about pricing errors. It was the insult that the person in question is obviously miffed about and for good reason.
I am sure the person in question is getting themselves torn a new one and other people are getting shouted at.
That aside. They are doing a job in a second language that alot of people can't do in their 1st.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
