Originally Posted by
N Joe
No. 1
I have never been rude to JPAC or any other call centre and nothing I wrote suggested that I had been. If the system worked even reasonably well I doubt anyone else would be either. In fact, on the numerous times that I have called JPAC, the operators have generally seemed more frustrated at not being able to answer my questions than I have at receiving no answer.
My original comment was a simple list of quotes from the conversations so I don't see what there is to be baffled about. My quip about passing PompeySailor's regards to Heidi was an attempt at humour - something that is quite often used as a coping mechanism when faced with all types of adversity.
N Joe
Amazing how the standards of "customer service" can differ. I asked a rep at Fred Olsen to send an email to the ship my father-in-law is on, wishing him a Happy Xmas, but I didn't send my email until late on Christmas Eve. She emailed back the day after Boxing Day, apologised for not being open on Christmas Day, and sent it straight afterwards. It cost nothing, except a little extra effort on her behalf, and the goodwill generated is worth at least two more group cruise bookings. It's the combination of little things that give a good impression. It wasn't her job, it was a favour, and she did Fred Olsen Lines proud.
In the case of JPA, it's the combination of continual errors that gives the overall impression. Given the huge pot of money, it has to be asked why the testing was not completed so that these errors were not made. How on earth can any competent organisation generate a pay run which can't even calculate the tax of a large percentage of the workforce properly? How can it fail to run simple 10% variance checks on monthly balances? How can they have failed to run the system silently in tandem for a couple of months, and the excuse about not having the time to double enter the data is crap. We managed it with the RN pay system and some simple ODBC procedures to pull monthly activity across into a test bed. We only got shut down because EDS had effectively bought Centurion and the pay system and wanted a tri-Service pay package that they could manage and run.
Heidi didn't even ask for my Service Number, and told me that I should be grateful as I had just been paid! Being "grateful" for being paid is a new one on me, especially as they owe me the money! I don't care whether Heidi had nice eyes or made the tea well, her customer service procedures were incompetent. You simply cannot answer a question on a system which runs on Service Numbers, without asking for someone's Service Number!
And you have to wonder about a system which has to ask me to confirm my address to raise a customer query, but then fails to send the pay slips to me.....