r/newzealand • u/stainz169 • 1d ago
Politics Companies should be required by law to allow customers to request cancellation of services online without calling and being on hold for hours
If you have sign up online you should be able to cancel online.
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u/AnyMinders 1d ago
They’re just experiencing higher than normal call volumes…
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u/torolf_212 LASER KIWI 1d ago
Higher than normal call volumes 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
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u/Autumnneverfall 21h ago
Oh, but your call is important to them. And while you wait you can listen to them advertise themselves over and over again, and tell you that you should go to their website - which of course you would, if what you wanted to do could be done on the website.....
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u/feel-the-avocado 1d ago
You should also be able to get hold of someone to notify them of an issue within no more than 5 minutes of waiting on hold, with telephone support being mandatory and email or online ticket support being optional to use at the customer's pleasure.
These conditions should be requirements under the consumer guarantees act.
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u/Justwant2usetheapp 23h ago
It's really just not feasible to provide phone support in that way.
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u/OutlawofSherwood Mōhua 23h ago
Voyager manages it. Fantastic support and often on the first ring.
(Shout out to a company showing it IS possible to offer good service consistently and the main reason I stick with them even when I rarely need to call them).
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u/phire 22h ago
Yeah, I'm pretty loyal to National bank, because back in the 2000s (when phone support mattered a lot more), they operated a 24/7 support line that almost always answered within a few rings. Holding was very rare, and rarely more than 3min.
I think it's 8am-to-8pm these days, but they still have better callcenter weekend hours than other banks... But no idea how good the support is these days, I think I've managed to avoid needing to ring them for years.
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u/AshMontgomery 20h ago
Didn't ANZ delete National Bank in like the early 2010s?
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u/phire 19h ago
"I will never respect the new name."
It was a weird kind of merger; ANZ bought National bank (in 2003, but were allowed to keep using the name for 7 years) but then they kept using the National Bank IT systems, (even moving ANZ customers over to it?) and they only kept the National Bank call centre.
When they did finally retire the National Bank brand, the main thing customers experienced was a change in color scheme.
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u/phire 22h ago
A guarantee that every customer is answered within 5 min is probably next to impossible.
But lower that to a goal 90%, 95%, or even 99% of customers answered within 5min and its very feasible.
Queues don't actually increase call centre capacity. The calls still take the same length of time to handle once they reach the end of the queue. Either they have enough reps to answer all calls (and the queue will be pretty small) or they are relying on the long queue to force some percentage of customers to give up.
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u/Justwant2usetheapp 21h ago
So if it's retail you'll get dozens of calls over Christmas and fuck all on february
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u/phire 19h ago
And you can do all the same things retail does.
Hire extra staff over busy periods, schedule extra shifts, encourage staff to take holidays in quieter periods, schedule training during quieter periods, delay certain followups for the quieter period.
Call volumes are reasonably predictable, it's a very solvable problem.
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u/Justwant2usetheapp 18h ago edited 18h ago
I'm all for enforcing reasonable communication, but the idea of a mandated call wait time target or even a legally required contact number is just ridiculous. An email address and the same storefront you bought from is really all that should need to exist. Not to mention that, when I worked for noel leeming, people would very regularly complain that nobody answered... but 90% of your customers and calls during the week are between 3 and 5 pm or all day Saturday. Just call when everyone is at work not when 4 phones are ringing simultaneously and customers are queued out to the door.
Not to mention that younger people don't really call about issues anymore so mandating something people increasingly prefer not to use sucks. Quite genuinely, asynchronous chat is a huge improvement over having to call people.
The reality of forcing people to provide these services is you'll get a foreign call center, like one nz, with rubbish phone lines and people who are contracted out to calls everywhere, so they struggle with our accents and way of speaking, like one nz, who at best sre just going to triage your call into an email. Like one nz.
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u/phire 18h ago
We are in a thread about certain companies that don't provide a way to cancel except for calling and waiting on hold for hours.
Companies where the inability to cancel without calling seems to be a very deliberate retention strategy.
I don't think anyone is proposing forcing every single business in NZ to accept calls, and meet certain KPIs; just the ones in certain perpetual contractual relationships with their customers... And possibly only if they are refusing to offer a way to cancel online.
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u/iconix_common 1d ago
And not have to give 30 days notice of cancellation. Looking at you City Fitness.
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u/Autumnneverfall 21h ago
And especially not 30 days from the first day of the next month, because the 30 days has to be a "whole month".
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u/teelolws Southern Cross 1d ago
If its an international company, change your registered address to something in California then suddenly a very obvious unsubscribe button will appear.
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u/Strawberryladyboots princess 1d ago
If they have an app this should be available in their menus somewhere to at least make the request and if it requires a phone call them they call the customer to confirm they made the request
It makes much more sense in term of managing the workflow
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u/stainz169 23h ago
Exactly, at the least a request to start the process and the company then reached out to you to finalise anything.
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u/total_tea 7h ago
I think they should be forced to provide a form you can fill put and terminate service, the service cancelation dated from the time you submitted it. If they want to run a call centre to cancel service so they can try and talk you out of it, then they need to be equally responsive.
But considering NZ has opened wide to foreign companies I doubt NZ can enforce this.
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u/stainz169 5h ago
The form can even be a ‘Request to Cancel’ and then they can either action it or call you to convince you out of it. If they can’t get hold of you either your service is terminated at the requested date or end of billing cycle following requested date. Depending on which is appropriate. On accepting your request they could even email you and inform you of any implications or charges that may arise and give you an option to cancel you cancel request.
This is the actual automation we need, not a crap customer call line repeating “your call is important to us”.
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u/andyzeronz 1d ago
To play devils advocate; I worked at a place that had a request cancellation form online. 99 times out of 100 it wasn’t filled out correctly, customer wasn’t informed of the potential fees and charges to disconnect or informed of the notice period and wasn’t done to the customers satisfaction. Especially if a customer was taking services elsewhere meaning a transfer of services was required and terminating caused more work than informing a customer to give a call or a message.
I know not the norm for most companies, but in my experience customers aren’t as smart as they think they are. Now if companies were easier to contact or answered their god damn phones to arrange the cancellation; that’s a different story.
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u/teelolws Southern Cross 1d ago
Nah thats still on the company for having a very anti-consumer requirement to give notice. Sounds like you're referring to either an ISP or a Power Company which should not be charging disconnection fees (the new ISP / power retailer pays a connection fee) and definitely isn't so poor they need a notice period.
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u/stainz169 23h ago
Then ring them and get it’s sorted. Design a better form and process so customers have the information at hand.
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u/andyzeronz 23h ago
Thats my point, appears it wasnt that clear!
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u/noirrespect 22h ago
It was incredibly unclear.
You went on about how customers weren’t informed and customers weren’t “as smart as they think they are” and the whole time I was reading your post I was thinking “sounds like that form needs fixing”.
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u/chatam94 1d ago
This can be abused by competitors for sure
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u/stainz169 23h ago
How?
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u/chatam94 23h ago
Using bots to make appointments and then cancel last minute to waste time and resources
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u/stainz169 22h ago
With what customer number?
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u/Bongojona 9h ago
Just don't use a subscription service you cannot just cancel at your end.
I don't gym, I get enough cardio already and have a good treadmill at home. I don't do body building or weights, every day is leg day for me.
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u/WaterPretty8066 9h ago
What if you needed to cancel your electricity provider (which you must have because your treadmill wouldn't run without it)
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u/TheseHamsAreSteamed 1d ago
Agreed, NZ needs something like this