Do consumers have the right to communicate by snail mail and bypass call centres?

Knuttell said:

...One thing I have learned over this episode is never to take at face value what a call centre rep tells you whether they are Bank or Financial Regulator staff,I am reminded of the William Goldman quote "nobody knows anything"...

Click to expand...

This quote in another thread got me thinking.....Do consumers have the right to communicate by snail mail and bypass tiresome call centres?

Hi AJ

Yes. I frequently recommend to people to put everything in writing so that there is a paper trail should you need to escalate the complaint.

I would suggest proceeding as follows:

1) Call the call centre
2) If you don't get an adequate response, ask to speak to their supervisor.
3) Whatever response you get, write to them confirming the response and what they have agreed to do.

Having said that, you should probably email them before mailing them as it's easier to communicate by email. It's easier to send copies to people.

Brendan

Brendan Burgess said:

Having said that, you should probably email them before mailing them as it's easier to communicate by email.

Click to expand...

My bank tell me that the department dealing with my complaint don't do emails to customers due to some date protection or something.

They also don't seem to know where letters go, even registered post ones. Complety incompetent. Deliberatly so in my opinion. Just another thing to be battling. But it takes a great deal of patience.

I would normally send in any proper complaints by registered post if calling about it hasn't resolved it. I've only ever had to do it with an insurance company and they were very funny about writing to them, would only give me a po box for their customer care team so sent it registered to their head office. Worked a treat. The consumer connect site has a whole page of complaint letter templates so I'd imagine you do have a right to submit complaints that way

If a problem is moving to the stage where legal action seems to be a possibility, then I would consider it best to communicate by letter to their registered office (usually, but not necessarily, the same address as their head office). Proof of delivery is useful, so registering the letter is a good move; recorded delivery is an alternative.