Monday 23 February 2009

Etisalat Makes My Day

400 calls in search of a human later. Much listening to messages talking about 'our world class customer service' included...
"Hello."
"Hello."
"Hello."
"OK. Hello, our telephone is not working. We have checked and it is not disconnected, but you get 'not available' when you dial in and an engaged tone when you dial out. Our ADSL is down, too."
"You have fault?"
Repeat
"You can change the handset."
"This is a company. All our handsets are not working. And our Internet."
"Internet?"
"Yes, Internet. Look, this isn't a radio commercial. What's the problem?"
"You have fault!"
"OK. You fix fault then."
"Yes. In three days."
"This is a company. How do you expect us to work for three days no Internet, no telephone?"
"It is problem, yes. You pay Dhs150 per hour, engineer will come in two hours."
"What, so because you can't provide reliable connectivity to your customers to ITU standards, you're going to charge me Dhs150 an hour to pay your engineers to do basic fault reporting on a multiple line failure to our location?"
"What?"
"Yes. Please. We pay Dhs150 per hour. or Dhs 1,500. I don't care. Fix it now."
"OK. Engineer will come."
To be updated

...Update...
Pilot's log.
Stardate Dubai 10.30am

The engineer hasn't arrived.
The problem apears to have fixed itself. We have Internet and telephone connectivity. Spock has gone down the shops for a packet of celebratory Caramel Digestives and Scottie is sobbing into his engineering manuals. I feel a strong spring urge and Lieutenant Uhuru's looking damn fit these days...

...Update 2.0...
I forgot to post this, but a strange man called the next day and was surprised to get through to us. That's right, he was the engineer.

14 comments:

Mita said...

Did it work? Did the engineer come?

Unknown said...

:D :D ROFL!!! People at work think I've had a little drink before I came in - I've been giggling at your post ever since I read it...

I know, I know, this is a bad thing for your office... but take a step back, you've got to admire the incredulous mind numbing retardedness that is etisalat :D :D

Looking forward to the updates... Good Luck!!!

hut said...

Lol - but you solved the problem after all. What's a 150 dirhams for not having to talk to these imbeciles again anytime soon.

Sherif Abaza said...

It is now two and some hours later....what's the update?

Em said...

have to love the service :)

hemlock said...

believe me when i say this.
everytime i have a problem with the internet, i move away from the computer and pray that the problem fixes itself in an hour or two;
it's worked well so far *touchwood* and saves me the frustration of dealing with etisalat.

The Ego said...

Hahahahahaha...

Amazing service!!! :D

samuraisam said...

More than likely your area was probably down for maintenance or something and Etisalat was too stupid to notice. Which is typical.

Their customer support line is lovely though isn't it? Is it the same 101 number for businessone users?

Susan said...

I think I felt my own blood pressure rise just reading that.

Grumpy Goat said...

"Have you tried rebooting your machine?"

That's the usual response from computer helpdesks to any request for assistance.

One of my colleagues accidentally sat on his laptop and broke the screen: big crack and disfunctional LCD. Our computer people absolutely refused to do anything until he'd registered the problem with Helpdesk by email (How, with a broken computer?) and rebooted the machine...

Anonymous said...

Still beats the hell out of du.

Dubai Jazz said...

"hello"
"hello"
"hello"
"hello"


they be damned if they do not reciprocate.

rosh said...

I'd think you guys 've got sufficient material for a book! "Customer service - Don'ts, for Dummies". Dedicated to dummies at Etisalat.

emirian said...

it is called "CUSTOMER service". In English, CUSTOMERS MUST BE SERVED. In other words, CUSTOMERS DEMAND things and GET SERVED. In BEST of the BEST organizations "CUSTOMERS ARE ALWAYS ?????" yeah you tell me what, daaaaah

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