Ditched Helicopter award to Santander

We have a submission for a Ditched Helicopter Award from Kerrie Allman:

"Morning Roger,

I have a candidate for your ditched helicopter award, Santander business banking. I opened an account with them in May this year and all seemed fairly straightforward until it came to actually paying anyone from the account. I discovered that they didn't subscribe to the faster payment system so if I wanted to send a same day payment over the value of £200 (staff salaries anyone?) I would have to use CHAPS. It is not possible to send a CHAPS payment online so a form has to be completed, signed and faxed / emailed to the CHAPS department for them to send. Hassle for a small business owner who already doesn't have enough hours in their day.

On the last working day in May I duly completed their form for my 24 staff, filled in all the details, accepted that for that month I would have to pay the £20 per staff member CHAPS fee (I have since amended contracts to state that payments will be made on the last working day of the month but will not clear until 5th so that they can be sent by BACS) sent the form off and waited. I received a security phone call from Santander and thought that was all taken care of. The money left my account that day.

3 days later the first staff member asked me when they would be paid. A quick survey found that nobody had had their wages credited to their account despite the money and the fees having left my account on the last day in May. Phone calls to Santander were useless as all they could tell me was that it should have been in my staffs accounts when clearly it wasn't. The next working day someone from Santander's fraud team rang me back to tell me that all of the funds were in a holding account as they had been marked as fraud. This was due to the amount of the transaction and the fact that it was the first one that I had made from the new account, despite the fact that I followed their processes and answered their security call and had more than enough funds in the account.

All of the funds were returned to my account and payments were made again to staff and received by staff that day, Monday 6th June.

However the story doesnt end there. 1 of the payments were actually unable to be credited back to my account and bounced back to the fraud teams holding pot on Tuesday 7th June. This payment was to a member of staff who had a Santander account, we had to go into a branch with my bank details and their bank details in order to release the money. They were then paid twice for some reason so 7 days after their salary was due it was credited twice to them. Santander couldn't retrieve the money so the staff member had to manually transfer it back to me. It seems odd that all of the Natwest, Barclays accounts seemed to have a smoother process than another Santander account!

I complained bitterly about this as you can expect and had to ask for my CHAPS fees to be returned to me as the standard response was that they had made the payments same day so the charges still stood. After many calls and complaints and emails I was finally sent a bunch of flowers by Santander with a card saying sorry for the small problem with my account. After a phone call where I accused them of sexism (would they have sent a male company owner a bunch of flowers and a sorry?!) I finally got my CHAPS fees refunded.

Big fail for Santander as my business turnover is a not insignificant £80,000 a month."


I think that's a very strong submission - so a Ditched Helicopter Award goes to Santander Business Banking

Ditched and Golden Helicopter Awards to Hilton Hotels

In October, it was The Professional Speakers’ Association Annual Convention and it was held at the Hilton in Coventry over 3 days. On arrival a number of my colleagues found that there was no soap in the rooms. They went to the reception and said, “There is no soap in our rooms,” to which the reply was, “No, that’s correct,” “What are you going to do about it?” they asked and the response was, “They missed the delivery and there won’t be another one till Thursday.” They were then asked whether there were shops in the area where they could buysoap and were told that they weren’t allowed to do that.
A colleague of mine Alan Stevens then Tweeted about what an appalling situation it was that there was no soap in the rooms in a major hotel and also that the charges for Wi-Fi internet access were extortionate. 2 hours later he had an email from Hilton Hotel’s head office in the US apologizing for this situation and half an hour later the soap was delivered and indeed all the delegates in the convention received soap and free Wi-Fi access!
Hilton apparently monitor Twitter 24/7 – do you?
Whilst this was a quite unacceptable situation that we found, I am a little reluctant to give Hilton just a Ditched Helicopter Award since they excelled themselves in correcting of the situation so I think what I’ll do is give them one of each, a Ditched Helicopter and a Golden Helicopter Award goes to Hilton Hotels.

Golden Helicopter Award to MD2MD

MD2MD run CEO groups around the country providing “the board you can’t afford” particularly for Managing Director Owners of Small and Medium Businesses. I regularly speak for them and they are a delight to do business with. Most recently I ran 4 workshops for them in Leeds, Manchester, Banbury and Maidehead and when I came to send them my invoice, this time they absolutely excelled themselves!
I emailed them my invoice and an unbelievable 3 hours later the funds were in my company bank account. An experience I will talk about again and again.
I am very happy to give a Golden Helicopter Award to MD2MD

Golden Helicopter Award to Interparcel.com

Interparcel.com are not just a comparison site for couriers but in addition have buying power with those couriers so their prices are significantly lower than the couriers themselves. Their site is exceptionally easy to use and I had the wonderful experience of spending no more than 20 minutes on a Thursday booking in my parcel to go to Dubai, it was collected later that afternoon and amazingly I had word from that it had arrived on the Sunday.
This is how the service industry should be and I am more than happy to give a Golden Helicopter Award to Interparcel.com.

Ditched Helicopter Award for FedEx

I recently needed to ship a number of my books to Dubai. Fortunately, I started out by Googling “Couriers to Dubai” and discovered interparcel.com where I could enter details of my package and they then come up with the cheapest option. This was £63.40 with FedEx.
So I then packed up the books, went onto the FedEx website only to find that you first needed to set up an account, which I completed and they said an agent would call within 24 hours to get it all organized. Sure enough a few hours later I got a phone call who asked details about me and my company and she said, “You don’t need an account if it’s just a single shipment you’re making you can just do it straight through the website.”
So I then went on the website only to find that you DID need an account so I called them and a very robotic person told me that, “Yes, the only way you could ship in this situation was to do it through her over the phone,” so I thought, “Okay” so we went through the process until we got to the end when she told me the price would be £101.50!
I told her that I’d been quoted £63 and she said, “Oh that must be by Inter[parcel or Parcel2Go, they’re much cheaper than we are.” “But it is still FedEx that they’re shipping through,” I said “Oh yes but they’re much cheaper than us. Would you like to go ahead?” “Why would I want to go ahead with you if I can get it significantly cheaper elsewhere?” to which the reply was, “I don’t know.”
This was really a poor experience, there must be a better way of FedEx handling this situation both to their benefit and their customers’ benefit and as a result this month FedEx get a well deserved Ditched Helicopter Award.

Ditched Helicopter Award for Lousy service to Thames Water

With only two of us now in the house we thought it would be a good idea to install a water meter - in fact it would save us some hundreds of pounds a year (for the benefit of overseas readers in the UK we have traditionally paid a fixed annual amount for our water services based solely upon house size. However now you can opt to move to metered payment if you chose)
We went online and sent the massage that we wished to have a meter.
Four weeks or more later there was a knock at the door "to do a survey". This guy - who told us he was merely a contractor to Thames Water said that he thought it would be possible to fit a meter but that we would need to do some work first to expose the pipe and he would now submit his report.
Last week we had a message "from Thames Water" that they now wished to install the meter and for us to ring back. I did only to discover, firstly that it was another contractor and when I asked why they said they were Thames Water when they weren't the response was that they were "told to".
I advised them that as there had been such a long period since our request, and that we had to do work first, we would now like to have it done after the summer.
"You can't" I was told "It has to be done in 90 days"
"From when" I asked
"From the date of you first enquiry" they said.

I pointed out that that was already past - due to their delays.

"Yes" they said so we would therefore have to have it done very quickly!

I spoke to the supervisor who confirmed this total nonsense and that if we wished to delay the installation we would have to start the whole process again!!

They clearly can't even spell the word 'customer' so a Ditched Helicopter goes to Thames Water

Ditched Helicopter Award for lousy service to E Buyer

I purchased a Bluetooth Targus remote control for my slides from EBuyer only to find on delivery that whilst it said it was Mac compatible the instructions did not cover for a Mac.
I therefore spoke to the technical people at Targus who told me I had been sols an obsolete remote that was no longer supported and that I should return to the seller and seek a refund.
This I did only for the women at EBuyer to tell me that "We are perfectly entitled to advertise sell obsolete products and not tell people that they are". She also demanded to know why I had spoken to Targus as EBuyer had their own technical people.
All quite staggeringly appalling.

A well earned Ditched Helicopter therefore goes to EBuyer.com

Golden Helicopter Award to North Oxford Mini

We have just bought a new Mini for my wife and, unusually for such an activity, it was a delightful experience from beginning to end!
We dealt throughout with the Sales Manager at North Oxford Mini (North Oxford Garage) Nathan King who could not do enough for us. No matter what, everything was possible for him.
Even when we had done the deal and agreed the price with our trade in he still said that he would pass on any further special deals that came through from the manufacturers - amazing!

I am very happy there for to give Nathan King and North Oxford Garage a Golden Helicopter Award

Golden Helicopter Award to The Dome, Edinburgh

The Dome in George Street, Edinburgh is a restaurant, bar and cafe of the very highest quality and outstanding service - it's somewhere you just don't want to leave!
THE DOME was originally the old Physicians hall (1775), built and designed by JAMES CRAIG the celebrated planner of Edinburgh's New Town. Unfortunately for the College of Physicians the original estimate of £2,725 rose to £4,800 by completion, leaving the College approximately £1,000 in debt. Unsurprisingly after a short time the College looked for a purchaser and eventually THE COMMERCIAL BANK OF SCOTLAND made an offer for the site and premise for £20,000 in 1843 - some seventy years later.
In 1993 The Royal Bank of Scotland decided that the building was no longer viable and transferred all business to the St. Andrew Square office and 14 George Street was put up for sale. A local company called Caledonian Heritable Ltd bought the building and converted the bank to how you see it today.
It has been very carefully restored and decorated and is now just outstanding
A well earned Golden Helicopter Award goes to The Dome.

Golden Helicopter Award to Leica Cameras

My wife is in the final year of an honours degree in photography and recently purchased (to add to her stable of cameras!) the latest, magnificent Leica X1 model.
So many technical helps desks I find talk in another language and are less than helpful whereas Leica UK were simply fantastic and so helpful to my wife.

So a Golden Helicopter Award goes to Leica Cameras

Ditched Helicopter Award for lousy service to Dixons

This from Richard Wood of Gillissa

"I would like to nominate Dixons for one of your Ditched Helicopter awards for the worst customer service experience I have ever had. It would take quite a while to summarise the whole horrendous saga, but in essence we bought a product that died within 3 days of purchase and nearly 4 weeks later we are still trying to get them to take it back. Apart from their voice recognition system (which basically doesn’t), you then go through an incomprehensible set of options (which aren’t the ones you need) and then finish with a litany of false, misleading and factually inaccurate information from the people on their helpdesk.

I wouldn’t buy anything from either Currys or Dixons ever again"

A well deserved lousy service Ditched Helicopter Award to Dixons

Golden Helicopter Award to ALM Garages

I recently helped my eldest daughter to buy a new used car. We had decided on the makes and models we were interested in (although colour was, I think, top on my daughter's list!) and we visited four dealers within 20 miles or so of Congleton where she lives.

Two of the three were hopeless - with the salesmen exhibiting little or no knowledge of the cars and not much interest in selling us anything.

ALM Garages of Macclesfield, however, were the reverse. They were helpful, obliging, courteous and knowledgeable - a delight to business with.

So I have no hesitation in awarding ALM Garages a Golden Helicopter Award.

Golden Helicopter Award to BT!!

This is from my good friend John Harris of Rock Kitchen Harris:

"I thought you might be interested in some surprisingly good news about BT customer relations.
A few weeks before the due date, I realised that we hadn't arranged to transfer my Mum's telephone number for her move to sheltered accommodation. As it was a mile away from her old home and in a block with lots of existing numbers however, I thought it should be possible.
I rang the appropriate BT number, explained that she was 86 and that a telephone was vital but the Dundee call centre were extremely unhelpful. What I did next at around 6pm was to email the CEO of BT with a few well chosen criticisms of their customer relations.
Imagine my surprise, when travelling the next morning at 8 a.m. I picked up a response from the CEO promising to look into the matter. This was followed over the next few days by several emails from senior customer relations people who said that they would solve the problem. This resulted in engineers being on site and the phone being transferred at the exact time required.
To say that all this "exceeded expectations" is the understatement of the century and we are in awe of the system that can pick up a serious complaint so quickly and deal with it so thoroughly"

So a Golden Helicopter award goes to BT