As you may have read earlier this week, EE has introduced new fees charging its customers to speak with operators at its call centers under certain circumstances. Earlier this year, the UK’s largest 4G network began charging for ‘out of hours’ calls, asking £0.50 for the privilege of speaking with a customer service representative between 8pm and 8am, outside of the company’s normal operating hours.
More recently, it has introduced a flat £0.25 fee for all SIM-only customers to speak with an operator at any time and, more controversially, it has introduced a new optional fee for all customers that call its 150 and 07- and 08- customer service lines.
Now, anyone in a queue on the phone to speak with an operator at its call centers will be given the option to pay £0.50 for a ‘priority answer’ service, allowing them to jump the queue and speak with the next available operator.
But EE customers have reacted angrily to the move, as The Independent reports, with many questioning – as we mentioned previously – why the company was not doing more to improve its service for everyone, rather than just providing a fast-track for those willing to pay.
Tweets such as these are common:
And it’s not like EE is exactly in swimming in the love of its customers at the moment. Here’s a selection of angry EE users furious at the poor customer service they’re getting from the carrier – these are just a few tweets from the last three hours alone before this article was published, which should give you some idea of how many people are complaining:
EE evidently believes that it’s doing the right thing though, and promised that, despite the new optional call queue-jumping charge, they will “still process calls as quickly and efficiently as we can.” An EE spokesperson said of the charge: “It’s not that literally they would go straight through, all I know is it’s a queue-jump… ‘priority answer’ is what we’re referring to it as.”
The latest changes to EE’s customer service call charging structure came into effect on August 6.
Source: The Independent | top image via EE
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