The MacAlba

After hearing that a neighbour was about to take delivery of Bordernet equipment (where that neighbour ordered the service about a week AFTER I did), I was annoyed enough to immediately phone Bordernet to find out what on earth was taking so long.

After two phone calls and about 23 minutes of being “on holdâ€? I eventually spoke to somebody. Their service-desk person hadn’t listened to the detail of the message I had left on their answering service so I had to repeat that information.

I was eventually given the name and phone number of the installers in Melbourne. Likewise, the person I spoke to didn’t listen to the information being given to him and made some assumptions which caused the process to take some minutes longer than necessary. Is “listeningâ€? a lost art?

The installer explained that someone had called me a week ago, on February 7 to be precise, but hadn’t been able to leave a message. What!! They couldn’t leave a message because they have my home phone number not the work number. Bordernet’s application process only asks for the phone number of the location at which the service is to be installed - not a contact phone number. I mentioned this (the fact that they only had the home number) to the person taking my order at the time but that snippet of data was not of interest to them.

Regardless, I had updated my contact details on the Bordernet web site but they obviously didn’t pass that information on to the installer though.

… and what exactly were the installers going to do? They had let a week pass without trying to contact me - Bordernet does have an email address for me - they managed to use it to send me an invoice.

I now have another two weeks to wait for the equipment to be delivered - then, presumably, some additional time after that before the technician pays a visit to install the equipment.

Bordernet needs to remember that I have high expectations of quality customer service (I, being me, advised them of this when I ordered the service). They haven’t met those expectations so far.

Bordernet needs to improve some of their business processes before I could recommend them to the several hundred potential remote-area users that I want to find a service provider for. I’ve already discounted one HiBIS service provider due to their lack of being able to provide a service in a timely manner.