ANGRY FROM SHOEBURY

I'm getting to be quite an expert at writing letters of complaint.  I am gobsmacked at the fact that pretty much all but 2 of the companies involved in our house move have let us down in some way.  It's one of those times when you realise that as consumers we probably put up with bad service occasionally, but then when it all happens at the same time something clicks and you think ahhh.  Not good enough UK Plc.  Without going into too much ranty detail, here are some of the companies who really do need to try harder:

Royal Mail
Mail redirection set up 3 weeks before we moved, kicking in on moving day.  Two weeks after moving day, mail is still going to old address.  Three calls to customer services so far.  No positive resolution in sight.  Angry email sent today.

BT
Eventually came good after involving an insider friend and angry emails to the Chief Exec on the hour every hour for 3 days.  Shame it took 3 weeks of stress, confusion and terrible service to get us to the point of someone listening.  Orders cancelled, services delayed, and we weren't even customers at the time!

The Pier
Lovely furniture shop, terrible systems.  Ordered bedroom furniture a week before we moved.  Three weeks later, wrong stuff arrives.  Still sitting here, unopened, waiting to be collected.  Delivery of correct furniture still to be confirmed.  Fail.

Virgin Media
When asking them to collect their cable equipment at a time that was good for me, I felt like I was asking the customer services rep to eat the contents of his rectum.  Eventually, after replying to every statement he made with a simple "no" and threatening with formal complaint, they agreed to collect at a time that was suitable for me, not them.  Why not just do that in the first place?

Southend Council
E-Gov hasn't quite caught on.  Filling in their online change of details form for council tax resulted in a snotty email from a "Miss Jones" telling me I had done it too early and would need to phone them and do it all again in 2 weeks time.  An even snottier reply from me resulted in an apology and positive outcome.  Take that, Miss Jones.

DVLA
Option 1: Fill in bottom of driving licence and send back for change of address.  Option 2, do it all online and save time.  WRONG.  Option 2 took 35 minutes to complete after having to register details several times and give evidence of identity via passport agency.  Last page:  Thanks for your details, now please fill in the bottom of your licence and send it back.  What??  File that one under pointless waste of time.

So you get my drift.  It's no wonder moving house is so stressful when day after day you have to battle muppet after muppet trying to make things complicated.  What I've really come to learn over the last few weeks is that you never really deal with a company, just an individual.  That one person can either make things better or make things worse.  They never have no impact.  It's sad that the people entrusted with the reputation and power of customer services are usually the ones paid and treated worst in the organisation.  Memo to Chief Execs: it shows. 

But just to balance things out I want to give massive thumbs up to two companies.  Monarch Removals were like ninjas in purple t-shirts and moved the whole house for us in less than 3 hours.  Their professionalism and efforts were completely amazing.  Sky TV were also brilliant,  even faced with an 'unconventional' installation the engineer stood out in the rain and wouldn't give up until everything worked.  Those 2 companies are literally the only ones who gave us flawless service during the move.

It's bloody exhausting trying to give companies your money!  Some of them obviously just don't want it.  Oh and if I ever say I'm moving house again, shoot me.