I don’t normally rant about bad customer service but sometimes a company is just so bad that I just have to write it down to get it off my chest. Tep Wireless is one of those companies.
What should of been a relatively simple process of
- Order MIFI Device
- Collect from Airport
- Use whilst away
- Drop off at Airport
- Sleep
Ended up with my arriving at the airport on my departure date and heading down to the location to collect my device, where upon I get told that they have no record of my order and have no device for me. I promptly pull out my order confirmation which confirms both the time and location and the person behind the counter just shugs.
After 30 mins of waiting around and they making calls to the different terminals at Heathrow I get told that if I head over from Terminal 5 to Terminal 3 that they have a backup device that they can supply me. So off I traipse to get the Heathrow express train to terminal 3. Once I arrived there and spend 20 mins explaining my story again and then trying to get back through to the customer service agents for Tep Wireless they tell me that actually they don’t have any US compatible devices that I can take with me but its okay because they will courier one to my hotel for the next morning.
Happy that I wouldn’t have to survive without access to Twitter for a week I headed off for my flight, and upon arrival I made sure that the consierge knew that I was expecting a package and to let me know when it had arrived.
As you might expect, the device was never delivered as promised and once again trying to get through to their support line was near on impossible, so I resorted to emails where the only way I seemed to manage to get any kind of response in a resonable time was to threaten to go through the chargeback process with VISA (if you don’t know about this read info on it at How do I use chargeback?), after a few emails back and forth where they would promise to investigate and would refund my money immediately, 2 weeks later and still no refund in sight and any emails asking for confirmation that the refund was being processed now being ignored, so now I had to take time out of my busy schedule to sit down and fill out all of the associated paperwork to send off to Visa.
I now just need to wait and I should have my money refunded by VISA in the next couple of weeks but Tep missed out on a great opportuinity to provide me with a good experience both by providing me with the service I ordered and also when things went wrong a quick and speedy resolution. I would certainly recommend everyone to avoid them at all costs.